Some defendants dismissed in ‘Jane Doe’ lawsuit against JC, police
JOHNSON CITY, Tenn. (WJHL) — The judge in a sexual assault-related federal lawsuit against Johnson City and several police officers — related to accused sex offender Sean Williams — has dismissed some counts against certain officers while upholding others.
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U.S. District Judge Travis McDonough’s order Wednesday removes former Johnson City Police Department (JCPD) Capt. Kevin Peters and officers Justin Jenkins and Brady Higgins completely from the lawsuit filed by “Jane Doe” alleged victims of Williams.
“On behalf of Justin Jenkins and Brady Higgins, we are certainly happy with the court’s ruling,” Keith Grant, who is from a firm representing those officers, told News Channel 11 in a statement.
Along with officers Toma Sparks and Jeff Legault, they had filed motions to dismiss the counts against them earlier this year, relying on a so-called “Rule 12(c) claim.” A judge can dismiss counts if they find factual allegations haven’t met a “plausibility” test that requires “more than a sheer possibility that a defendant has acted unlawfully.”
Along with the City of Johnson City and former JCPD Chief Karl Turner, all five officers had been defendants in the case. First filed in June 2023, it accuses the JCPD of complicity in the alleged victimization of dozens of women by Williams while he lived downtown. Neither the city nor Turner had filed procedural dismissal motions like those filed by the other officers, but the city and all defendants have continually denied any claims of wrongdoing.
“Plaintiffs welcome the Court’s Order which preserves, at least in part, the causes of action in the Second Amended Complaint that were challenged on the motion to dismiss by some of the individual defendants,” Heather Moore Collins, one of the plaintiffs’ attorneys, wrote in response to a request for comment.
“We look forward to presenting the case at trial on the robust evidence they have developed during discovery.”
Williams, who JCPD failed to serve an ammunition charge warrant on in May 2021, was arrested in April 2023 on drug charges in Western North Carolina. Officers searched hard drives he had with him and allegedly found thousands of images and videos showing Williams sexually assaulting dozens of women, who appeared to be drugged, in his downtown fifth-floor apartment.
There were also allegedly images of minors being assaulted by Williams, and he now faces criminal charges for those alleged assaults. He has not yet been charged in any rapes of adult women.
FULL COVERAGE OF THE SEAN WILLIAMS CASE
One part of Sparks’ dismissal motion was denied and the other was granted. Both parts of Legault’s motion — of claims he violated victims’ right to due process and obstructed enforcement of a sex trafficking act — were denied.
As a result, Johnson City, former Chief Turner, Legault and Sparks remain defendants at this stage of the lawsuit, which is currently set for trial in April 2025. Peters, Higgins and Jenkins are no longer defendants.
“We are very grateful that the Court found that Kevin Peters did not do anything wrong and dismissed the case against him,” Daniel Rader IV, Peters’ attorney, wrote in response to a request for comment from News Channel 11.
Mixed ruling on obstructing violations of sex trafficking act
Peters, Higgins, Jenkins and Legault all faced claims they obstructed enforcement of what the Jane Doe attorneys allege was a sex trafficking venture by Williams. The plaintiffs have alleged behavior ranging from payoffs to other benefits received in exchange for allowing Williams — who’s alleged to have drugged and raped dozens of women in his apartment and filmed the encounters — to continue with impunity from at least 2018 to 2021.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation did open a sex trafficking investigation into Williams starting as early as 2022.
McDonough wrote that the claims made against Peters, Higgins and Jenkins simply weren’t convincing enough to keep them in the lawsuit at this stage.
In Jenkins’ case, he wrote that the claims did not show the officer had any reason to know of an investigation into sex trafficking, or even to anticipate the possibility of one when he worked on a case related to Williams in 2020.
Peters knew more about multiple alleged assaults by Williams. But the judge wrote that even if, as claimed, Peters “waved off accounts of Williams’s abuse by claiming victims lacked credibility,” nothing has shown that Peters “suspected Williams’s actions amounted to something beyond sexual assault” such as trafficking.
Higgins, too, even if aware “Williams was repeatedly drugging and sexually assaulting women” wasn’t shown to plausibly have knowledge of a potential sex-trafficking scheme.
Legault, on the other hand, is alleged to have signed off on an arrest report of an alleged victim after she had met with an FBI agent to provide a statement about Williams’ sexually assaulting her.
McDonough found plausible reasons to conclude the arrest report wasn’t sufficient to “legitimize the arrests of Female 9 and her companion” in April 2023. As an officer in JCPD’s special victims unit, Legault “knew of or should have known of the existence of an investigation into sex-trafficking conduct at the time he retaliated against a witness in that investigation,” McDonough wrote.
“Accordingly, Plaintiffs have sufficiently alleged a TVPA (Trafficking Victims Protection Act) obstruction claim against Legault.”
Plausible that Sparks, Legault actions ‘shocked the conscience’
Sparks had one part of his motion granted, related to a claim he took actions that heightened the risk Williams posed to alleged victims — a so-called “state-created danger.” But McDonough denied Sparks’ motion to dismiss a claim alleging that he engaged in behavior that “shocks the conscience.” Both claims relate to alleged substantive violations of the alleged victims’ constitutional rights to due process.
Sparks is at the center of the corruption allegations. As McDonough noted, the latest version of the Doe attorneys’ lawsuit “is replete with conduct by Sparks that shocks the conscience: Plaintiffs allege he solicited a bribe from Williams in exchange for insulating his criminal activities, refused to investigate Williams’s sex-trafficking crimes, failed to execute Williams’s arrest warrant, intimidated and lied to victims, and concealed evidence of Williams’s crimes.”
Sparks’ attorney argued that because that behavior was directed toward third parties and not necessarily plaintiffs, it couldn’t plausibly meet the “conscience-shocking” standard. McDonough rejected that argument, leaving Sparks to continue defense against allegations of substantive due process violations.
The judge ruled the same way in Legault’s case. He wrote that the likelihood Legault okayed a “facially unconstitutional arrest” of a witness in the sex trafficking investigation would be “an egregious abuse of authority” that “does not comport with traditional ideas of fair-play and decency.”
McDonough rejected “shock the conscience” claims against Jenkins, Peters and Higgins. He also rejected “state-created danger” claims against Sparks and Jenkins.
News Channel 11 has also reached out to the City of Johnson City and the attorneys for Jenkins, Higgins and Legault for comment.
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