Federal authorities today arrested a former Madison County deputy for his role in the roadside arrest and brutal beating of a Tennessee handyman in August of 2012. Deputy Justin Watson, who quit the force in April, was the only one named in the federal indictment.
Watson has been charged with five counts, two related to the stop and beating, one related to lying about it under oath and two more related to intimidating witnesses, including aiming an unloaded gun at a fellow deputy and pulling the trigger.
Robert Bryant last year sued Sheriff Blake Dorning and seven deputies, including Watson, arguing he was stalked, stopped, beaten and wrongfully charged with assaulting an officer in revenge for a barroom scuffle with Watson.
Madison County settled the suit for $625,000 last summer without calling a witness and the FBI announced an investigation into the stop. The indictment was handed down last week and unsealed this afternoon.
"Specifically, defendant Watson willfully stopped and detained (Bryant) without probable cause and without reasonable suspicion," reads the first count for deprivation of rights under color of law.
The second count of deprivation of rights refers to the physical assault. Bryant has said he was sucker punched, choked, stomped and beaten with collapsible baton. "The offense resulted in bodily injury to (Bryant) and the offense included the use of a dangerous weapon," reads the indictment based on the findings of the federal grand jury.
The beating of Bryant would largely pass without public scrutiny for nearly a year, until Bryant's wealthy advocate, Jason Klonowski, was found shot three times in the back of the head at his home just outside Huntsville.
Klonowski, who had employed Bryant as a handyman, had printed t-shirts supporting Bryant and helped pay for his lawyers. Klonowski in September of 2013 grew impatient with the legal process, built a stage in his front yard, hosted a rally and publicly promised to see Watson and other deputies imprisoned.
One month later, Klonowski's body was found posed in a chair near his barn. The execution remains unsolved, but would set in motion a chain of events that led to the federal grand jury.
The trouble began in the summer of 2012 in a pool hall in Hazel Green with a drunken scuffle between Bryant and an off-duty Watson. Witnesses say someone, maybe Bryant, might have said something about Watson's girlfriend. The exchange ended with a punch and some wrestling, and both Watson and Bryant being thrown out of the bar.
Watson is now charged with corrupt persuasion of a witness that relates to his effort to track down Bryant's identity after the fight.
"Specifically, defendant Watson instructed A.B. to 'Keep your mouth shut' about both a fight between defendant Watson and (Bryant), and defendant Watson's subsequent efforts to identify and locate (Bryant)."
Police records show that Watson pressured dispatcher Amanda Billings for information about Bryant's identity.
A second charge of witness intimidation involves a fellow deputy, as Watson tried to cover up that the man beaten during a traffic stop was the same guy from the pool hall.
"Specifically, after defendant Watson admitted to J.C. on or about August 22, 2012, that he recognized (Bryant) from a previous incident, he warned J.C. not to tell anyone."
Despite the police reports indicating Watson as the officer who made the stop, Bryant has long maintained, including in his lawsuit, that another deputy, Jake Church, had pulled him over that night. Police records show that Church did drive Bryant to the hospital after the beating. But police records indicate that Watson was the officer who stopped Bryant on Aug. 22, 2012, for an illegal lane change.
In one report, Watson said that Bryant lunged from the truck and attacked him. In a second report, police said Bryant attacked Watson during a field sobriety test. Bryant has maintained that the deputy asked him to step out of the pickup truck and then, without warning, punched him hard enough to knock out his teeth.
It's not clear if the deputy J.C. in the indictment is Jake Church. But the indictment lists some specific acts of intimidation by Watson against this fellow deputy.
"In or about 2014, J.C. noticed that his head had been cut out of a photograph of deputies with the Madison County Sheriff's Office. When J.C. asked when Watson had altered the photograph, defendant Watson responded, 'When did you go talk to the FBI?'
"In another incident in or about 2014, defendant Waston pointed his unloaded handgun at the back of J.C.'s head and pulled the trigger."
Immediately after the stop of Bryant, Watson's supervisor, then Sgt. Chad Brooks, had become suspicious. He'd heard rumors that Watson had been in a bar fight. Brooks was the one who documented Watson's efforts to learn Bryant's identity by pressuring a dispatcher.
In late 2012, Brooks and Lt. Mike Salomonsky would then document that Watson had not been truthful when testifying in a criminal hearing against Bryant. Bryant faced a felony charge of assaulting an officer. Watson denied having seen Bryant at the pool hall during the preliminary hearing.
Watson is now charged with obstruction of justice for his misleading testimony at the hearing in December of 2012.
"In truth, as defendant Waston then well knew, he had seen (Bryant) prior to the night of August 22, 2012. Further, defendant Watson recognized, on or about August 22, 2012, that (Bryant) was the same man he previously had seen, encountered, and then fought with at Billy's Bar & Grill."
The Department of Justice issued a statement this afternoon saying Watson faces a maximum sentence of 11 years in prison for the two civil rights charges. He faces up to 60 years in prison on the three obstruction counts.
Watson's supervisors, according to their own reports, were told to drop their investigation in late 2012 by senior officers in the sheriff's department. And that may have been the last of the case if not for Klonowski.
A neighbor found Klonowski's body on Nov. 3, 2013. Madison County dropped the criminal case against Bryant 10 days later. On Nov. 20, Bryant's attorney, Hank Sherrod, wrote an open letter calling for an outside investigation into Klonowski's death, saying deputies had motive to harm him.
On Nov. 21, Sheriff Blake Dorning asked the state for help investigating his own men. The state took over the Klonowski murder but declined to investigate the Bryant case.
The sheriff's department suspended Watson without pay for two weeks in January of 2014 based on the "deceitful" testimony in December of 2012. He was the only one disciplined in the case. Watson had turned in his badge on April 5.
Watson turned himself into federal authorities today and his initial appearance was held in U.S. District Court in Huntsville this afternoon.
Prosecutors told the court they were willing to allow Watson's release on a $25,000 unsecured bond.
But U.S. Magistrate Harwell Davis said that after reading the charges he had questions about whether Watson presents a danger to the community. He cited the fourth count against Watson, related to the allegation that Watson pointed an unloaded gun at another deputy's head and pulled the trigger.
Davis said he hadn't made up his mind about Watson's release and set a detention hearing for 3 p.m. Tuesday to determine if Watson should be released on bond and under what conditions.
Watson, who sat at the defense table wearing handcuffs, will remain in federal custody until the hearing.
At a press conference late Monday, Sheriff Dorning emphasized that Watson was a former deputy, that he had been on administrative duty since May of last year before quitting and that the department was waiting on the full FBI report to see if any other deputies violated departmental policy.
"We do not condone this type of behavior," said Dorning, mentioning the department had added body cameras and ethics courses to improve community policing.
But Dorning also emphasized that Watson is innocent until found otherwise and talked about the challenges faced by his officers, of having to handle the mentally ill and drug addicted. "It's the things other people do not want to face."
Al.com staff writer Brian Lawson contributed to this report.
Updated at 4:45 p.m. on Aug. 3, 2015, with comments from Sheriff Blake Dorning.
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