Defense attorneys for a former Chattanooga officer charged with concealing evidence in 2014 to have a relationship with an alleged rape victim say there was too much of a paper trail for their client to hide anything.
“How could anyone in Karl Fields’ shoes think they could conceal this video tape with this paper trail and nobody would know about it?” defense attorney Jerry Tidwell asked this morning in Hamilton County Criminal Court.
Officers arrested James Leon Works Jr. in a hotel room on Shallowford Road after a woman said he had held her against her will, forced her to smoke meth, and raped her several times in a June 1, 2014, report. An officer named Brian Cottell seized a cellphone on-scene and checked it into police storage, Tidwell said.
Fields “literally” never touched that phone from check-in to Aug. 20, 2014, when the police department submitted its case file to the district attorney’s office, Tidwell said.
Fields faces one count of tampering with evidence and one count of official misconduct. That’s because the phone contained several videos of Works and the woman having “what appeared to be consensual sex,” special prosecutors say. The footage could have exonerated Works, who faced rape and kidnapping charges. But Fields concealed it because he wanted to “further” a sexual relationship with the alleged victim.