Former Chief Magistrate Bryant Cochran and Angela Garmley. Garmley’s accusations against Cochran initiated a state investigation that led to the judge’s resignation.ROME, Ga. – Angela Garmley and Murray County Magistrate Bryant Cochran talked alone in his office for about 10 minutes, she testified today.
Then, Cochran asked Garmley to close the door. It was April 9, 2012. One day after Garmley says three neighbors beat her up. She came to Cochran’s office and asked him for a court hearing about the incident.
Instead, Garmley said, Cochran asked her about her impending divorce.
“He said he heard Joe had a pretty wife, ‘But damn you’re fine,'” she told a jury in U.S. District Court this morning.
Cochran is on trial on several criminal charges, including conspiring against someone’s rights, depriving someone of civil rights, conspiring to distribute a controlled substance and intimidating a witness. He could go to federal prison for 20 years.
The whole case sprouted from his relationship with Garmley. More specifically, the case sprouted out of his meeting with Garmley in his office that April afternoon.
This morning, Garmley testified about what happened behind closed doors. Telling him about the assault that happened the day before, Garmley said she showed Cochran the Facebook status she later posted on her phone.
Garmley told the jury this morning that Cochran then took her phone and searched through it for “five to 10 minutes.” When he gave it back, the phone was not open to Facebook. She said it was open to an album of her private, digital photos.
She testified that Cochran then put his intentions out there. He told her he was sexually attracted to her, wanted a mistress and would like her to return to his office wearing a dress with no underwear, she said.
At the end of the meeting, when she stood up to leave, Cochran pressed one hand against the door and touched her shoulder with the other. He gave her a slip of paper with his phone number on it, she testified, and she gave him her own contact information.
“I agreed to come back,” she told the jury this morning.
“Why did you agree to come back?” Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Davis asked her.
“I wanted justice,” she said.
She said she believed the people who beat her up would not be arrested if she didn’t have sex with Cochran. The next day, though, she reconsidered. She decided not to sleep with him, and the three defendants were arrested anyway.
For complete details, see tomorrow’s Chattanooga Times Free Press