Larry HillTwo years ago, attorney Larry Hill handed an inmate a lighter and a pack of Newports under the table.
But investigators observing the maneuver in surveillance footage at the Walker County Jail hoped for a bigger haul. For about a week, the Walker County Sheriff's Office, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation and the local drug task force had tried to zero in on Hill, a LaFayette lawyer with an office next to the district attorney's.
Some inmates told detectives Hill smuggled contraband into the jail, according to an investigative file obtained by the Times Free Press. They claimed his supplies ran from tobacco to marijuana to methamphetamine. And in June 2015, one inmate agreed to participate in a sting.
One night an inmate's friend on the outside dropped off the cigarettes and lighter at Hill's office, sliding them through the mail slot in the front door. Hill then brought them to the inmate, according to the file. The inmate told investigators something bigger would happen in 11 days: Allegedly, Hill agreed to sneak drugs inside.
The case fell apart soon after. Some other inmates suspected the source was working with police, and the source requested a transfer to a holding cell. Meanwhile, according to the file, an informant met with Ringgold attorney Jeremy Penland and told him what was going on.
Penland warned Hill about the investigation, according to the file. Hill then confronted the source, who stopped participating in the investigation. The sheriff's office blacked out the names of all informants in the file.
Now Hill faces criminal charges in an unrelated case: A grand jury indicted him in August on counts of influencing a witness and criminal attempt to suborn perjury. Hill was representing an alleged child molester and tried to convince the victim's mother to recant her story, according to the sheriff's office.
Hill relinquished the child molestation case and Penland took over. On Thursday, Penland said his appointment is a coincidence; he doesn't work with Hill often, and the Georgia Public Defender's Council randomly picked him to take over.
He also denied telling Hill he was the target of a criminal investigation.
"This is completely incorrect," he said of the file. "This is not credible."
Penland said he didn't know Hill was under investigation in 2015. He also said no informants contacted him to explain they were working with law enforcement, as the sheriff's office file says.
Instead, Penland said, he was visiting a client at the jail, who told him there were rumors about Hill sneaking cigarettes in to inmates. Penland's client said he knew other inmates wanted to work with detectives, hoping for leniency in their cases.
"That conversation occurred," Penland said. "It was very brief. I told [my client] just to stay out of it. It had no effect - no effect - on his case."
After hearing the rumors about Hill sneaking in cigarettes, Penland was worried police would stop trusting all the lawyers. He said deputies began strip-searching them when they visited clients. He said he confronted Hill about the rumors.
"I told him, 'You need to knock it off,'" Penland recalled. "He looked at me like I was crazy. He said, 'I don't know what you're talking about.' I said, 'Fine,' and that was it. I walked away."
Walker County Sheriff Steve Wilson said he and the detectives decided against pursuing charges when they only caught Hill with tobacco.
"At the most, when we looked at it, it was a misdemeanor," Wilson said, noting Hill's recent charges are felonies.
Hill's attorney, Chris Townley, does not believe his client committed a crime in the 2015 investigation. He said a source at the sheriff's office informed him it was resolved simply when someone at the sheriff's office contacted a third party, politely asking Hill to not to smuggle tobacco in the future.
Townley declined to name his source, only saying it was not Wilson.
"This was sort of a mountain out of a molehill," he said. "They tell him, 'Don't bring cigarettes in,' and he stopped."
Since his indictment Aug. 8, Hill has continued to run his law office, though the federal court in the Eastern District of Tennessee has suspended him from practicing. The State Bar of Georgia does not take action against an attorney unless an attorney is convicted of a felony. If that happened, the State Bar would file disciplinary charges with the state Supreme Court.
Hill did not return a message from the Times Free Press left at his law office.
According to the investigative file from the 2015 case, Walker County detectives began looking into Hill when multiple inmates - the file doesn't say how many - told them he was smuggling in drugs.
On May 21, 2015, an undercover GBI agent talked with Hill on the phone about smuggling. According to the file, Hill said he would bring tobacco inside, but he would not sneak in illegal drugs.
Five days later, two detectives met with a man whose name was blacked out in the file. They told him they knew he was bringing drugs into the jail, and he could be charged with conspiracy to distribute. According to the file, the man told them Hill had sneaked in tobacco, Xanax and methamphetamine.
In fact, the man said, Hill was going to bring him methamphetamine that day in a Copenhagen tobacco can. But after the meeting, according to the file, the man came back with no drugs.
He told investigators Hill was worried, thinking somebody was trying to set him up.
Contact staff writer Tyler Jett at 423-757-6476 or tjett@timesfreepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @LetsJett.