Arguments played out in court Monday morning as Chattanooga's police chief and the department's lead traffic investigator testified at a hearing about the alleged withholding of evidence in the case against the woman accused of hitting and killing a police officer.
Hamilton County Criminal Court Judge Don Poole said he didn't find any suppression of evidence, as the pieces in question don't exist, according to police and prosecutors, but he did note that some evidence would need to be turned over if it was found to exist.
Officer Nicholas Galinger, 38, was struck by a vehicle while he was inspecting an overflowing manhole in the 2900 block of Hamill Road just after 11 p.m. on Feb. 23, 2019. The driver fled the scene.
Ben McGowan, attorney for motorist Janet Hinds, who is charged in the case, has claimed he is missing certain pieces of evidence, such as body camera footage and additional reports or witness statements.
The police department and prosecutors have denied those claims and say they've handed over all of the evidence in their possession. Anything additional simply doesn't exist, they claim.
One piece, though - the digital scan of the crash scene - was left out because the scans are useless without the proper software to view them, Hamilton County District Attorney Neal Pinkston said. And another piece - a video from a property along Hamill Road - was "inadvertently left out" of the case file, Pinkston admitted, because it was formatted in a way that's incompatible with evidence storage systems used by police.
But even if some evidence doesn't exist, McGowan argued, it's evidence of poor police work, and he questioned why certain aspects weren't investigated or noted.
"Investigator [Joe] Warren consciously chose to include certain information in his report and exclude other information, judge," McGowan argued.
"What I need as a traffic investigator, is I need to know the 'who,' 'what,' 'when' and 'where,'" Warren said. "I need to know who was driving the vehicle, the nature of the driving of the vehicle. Things that can help me prosecute the case."
Based on body camera footage, the defense has learned a few of things:
- Officers at the scene initially believed a second vehicle could have hit Galinger.
- That second vehicle was stopped, and an officer, later identified as a Hamilton County sheriff's deputy, spoke to the occupants.
- At least one officer - Jennifer Lockhart, the first responding officer - was apparently told to fill out a statement but that statement wasn't included in the evidence.
Galinger was new to the police force and was therefore working with a field training officer the night he died. McGowan claims the training officer, Jarrod Justice, can be heard on body camera footage saying, "I think they ran over him as well" and "I was trying to get my car to block the road. Another car slipped by and I think hit him again [sic]."
Pinkston, however, has argued that Justice couldn't have seen if a second car definitively ran over Galinger because Justice turned in the opposite direction toward his patrol vehicle in order to block traffic. And an autopsy "showed no signs of a second impact" or that Galinger was run over while his body was on the road.
Whether Galinger was struck by a second vehicle is significant, McGowan argues, because it could explain the damage to his body or shed light on the ability of other drivers to see his clothing in the dark. Or, McGowan said, it could affect how far his body traveled, which could affect investigators' calculations of how fast Hinds was traveling.
"Our traffic investigators have done every bit of their due diligence - they investigated the scene, processed all the evidence," Chief David Roddy said. "And at no point during any updates or information that I was provided from that night to today have we seen any evidence that supported [a second vehicle hitting Galinger]."
But McGowan argues that Justice should have been interviewed or asked to give a statement. Warren, however, maintains that Justice didn't need to be interviewed because his body camera footage provided enough documentation.
The occupants of the second vehicle should have been interviewed, too, McGowan argues.
But they weren't asked to give a statement, no names or contact information were noted, and "[a]ny footage maintained by HCSO was lost due to technical issues." (The county doesn't have body cameras, though some deputies have microphones attached to their bodies to capture audio.)
All dash camera footage for all 130 patrol deputies between Oct. 25, 2018, and Jan. 23 of this year was lost after a software failure on Jan. 13, according to a letter hand-delivered to the District Attorney's Office on Feb. 25. The footage could not be recovered, as that was the only server used to store the videos.
But, Pinkston said, the conversation can be overheard through the body camera of another officer who was standing nearby.
"They didn't see anything. I'm letting them go," Warren said the deputy can be heard saying.
Because the sheriff's office video was lost in the server failure, that indicates that no one - police or prosecutors - requested for the video to be preserved, McGowan noted.
As far as officer Lockhart, who was asked to fill out a statement, Warren said he didn't remember ever seeing a witness statement from her.
"I'm gonna write a quick statement," she's heard saying on a body camera.
"Write down a statement and hold onto the log," another officer says.
"I got Lockhart's statement. I'm gonna put it in the car," a third officer says.
Warren said he didn't speak to her himself, but that he would look for the statement in question.
Judge Poole ordered the statement be turned over if it exists.
Whether the missing pieces were a mere oversight or a result of a poor investigation is unclear, McGowan argues, but he said it raises questions about the department's ability to objectively investigate the death of one of its own.
"I don't think, judge, it's inappropriate - for the defense to ask why ordinary investigative steps were not taken involving the death of a Chattanooga officer that would have been taken in another case," he said.
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