An attorney for a woman accused of hitting and killing a Chattanooga police officer with her car in 2019 has filed motions to strike certain pieces of evidence before a criminal trial gets underway in July.
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 Janet Hinds, who was charged with vehicular homicide and other crimes in the case, wants his client's blood test results and evidence collected at Hinds' home and in her vehicle to be suppressed for the trial. He argues that key details were left off police records or were wrong.
McGowan said Hinds' blood work was taken days after she turned herself in, and because of that the results could be inaccurate. The evidence collected at her home should be thrown out because police mistakenly wrote the wrong address for Hinds' home on the search warrant, he said.
Investigator Joe Warren with the Chattanooga Police Department admitted to making the error in court last week. In the affidavit Warren wrote the correct house number, 207, but wrote 209 on the search warrant. McGowan argued that because of that error, police had no right to search Hinds' car or home.
McGowan also argued that leaving off the time of the incident on the affidavit was a "critical" error and would be insufficient for probable cause, according to the motions filed in the case.
The attorney claimed in March 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 else 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 things weren't investigated or noted.
Judge Don Poole said the documents and motions will be considered. Hinds' trial is still set for July.
Contact Patrick Filbin at pfilbin@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6476. Follow him on Twitter @PatrickFilbin.