Ex-Harris County deputy testifies, sobs while saying sex act was consensual

Facing life in prison if convicted by a Superior Court jury, a former Harris County Sheriff’s deputy took the stand in his own defense Monday, claiming that the oral sex performed on him by a woman he had pulled over for a traffic violation in 2016 consensual and not forced as the woman testified earlier in the six-day trial.

Thomas Carl Pierson, at times emotional and crying while being questioned by his attorney, Bernard S. Brody of Atlanta, admitted to the jury that his conduct seen on four separate traffic stops involving three different women was “unprofessional and disgusting.”

“Are you proud?” Brody asked his client early into the more than three hours of testimony.

“Not at all,” Pierson testified.

Pierson, hired by Harris County Sheriff Mike Jolley in October 2014 after working in the Muscogee County Jail as a deputy, was terminated in May 2016, about three months after investigation into possible criminal activity while on duty.

“Sheriff Jolley and the people I worked for had high expectations of me to perform by job to a certain standard and I failed them,” he told the jury as he started to sob.

Pierson is facing a dozen charges stemming from traffic stops in 2015 and 2016. The stop on Feb. 14, 2016, in which he is accused of forcing a female motorist to give him oral sex, led other victims in previous incidents to come forward.

As a result of the February 2016 stop, Pierson was charged with aggravated sodomy, sexual battery, false imprisonment and tampering with evidence, and with two counts each of violating his oath as a public officer and sexual assault on a person in custody. The aggravated sodomy charge is the most serious under Georgia law, carrying a minimum of 25 years in prison and the possibility of a life sentence, if he is convicted.

As a result of that stop, two more victims came forward, alleging inappropriate conduct by Pierson. Neither of those women had a sexual encounter with the deputy.

He has four additional charges related to an Oct. 19, 2015, stop in which Pierson pulled a woman over, engaged in inappropriate behavior, then showed up at her home the next day, according to testimony. On Sept. 12, 2015, he had another stop in which he had inappropriate conversation with a female motorist and then showed up at her relative’s home more than an hour later.

He faces two misdemeanor stalking charges and two felony charges of violating his oath as a public officer.

Both the state and the defense rested their cases on Monday, setting up closing arguments in front of the nine-woman, three-man jury on Tuesday morning at the Harris County Courthouse in Hamilton. The case should go to the jury around lunchtime.

During the course of four days of testimony, the jury viewed Pierson’s behavior as a deputy as multiple dash-cam videos of the traffic stops were introduced into evidence. He also testified with all three of his accusers sitting on the front row near the jury box.

On Wednesday and Thursday, the woman had told the jury that she was pulled out of her car and Pierson held her by the head, forcing her to perform oral sex on him.

On Monday, Brody questioned his client at length about his actions on those stops. Pierson’s testimony about the Feb. 14 stop that led to the oral sex was at times graphic and told a different story of the stop and the events leading up to the sexual encounter.

During her testimony, the woman had admitted to flirting with the deputy. “I got the feeling that she wanted more than flirting,” Pierson testified.

The woman’s bra was partially exposed when he reached the car, Pierson testified. And throughout the stop she gave “non-verbal” signals such as running her fingers across her chest, Pierson testified.

“The flirting intensified on both sides,” Pierson testified.

After the first stop, Pierson gave the woman a warning ticket. She left and he followed her, where he used his blue light to pull her over again about five miles down the road from the original stop.

Pierson turned off the dash-cam in his vehicle as the second traffic stop began, leaving little video and no audio of the event.

“You knew filming the second traffic stop would be evidence of what took place, right?” Assistant District Attorney Bill Lisenby asked Pierson during cross examination.

“Yes, sir,” the former deputy responded.

Lisenby, at least four times, asked Pierson what he was expecting when the woman followed him to a dirt road after the second stop. Each time, the former deputy answered, “I didn’t know what to expect.”

Pierson testified that prior to getting out of the car the woman told him it might not be a good idea because should could end up naked. Asked why she would say that, Pierson said, “Because she said, ‘I know myself.’”

Lisenby was careful in his questioning of Pierson to point out that the woman never took off her clothes, which Pierson testified to.

“For someone who was afraid of getting naked, she just showed you her bra?” Lisenby asked Pierson.

When Pierson was first questioned on the day of the incident by his superiors, including then Chief Deputy Neil Adams, Pierson denied that anything inappropriate had happened. But the woman had identified the type of boxer shorts Pierson was wearing that day to investigators, and when Pierson was confronted with that information he changed his story and said the encounter was consensual.

“Was what you said when you were first accused a lie?” Lisenby asked the defendant.

“Yes, sir,” he responded.

Lisenby then picked at the details in the written statement Pierson had voluntarily given to Jolley on the day after the incident. At least a half a dozen times, Lisenby pointed out inconsistencies in what Pierson wrote and what he had said during earlier testimony.

Pierson said in his written statement the woman thanked him after the incident.

“She never took her clothes off, there was no sexual intercourse, no oral sex for her, and your testimony is she got up and said, ‘Thank you?’” Lisenby asked Pierson.

“Yes, sir,” he responded.

Pierson also testified to his actions on the two traffic stops in the fall of 2015. He was asked about the lengths of the stops. According to testimony, the one on Sept. 12, 2015, lasted more than 20 minutes, and the one on Oct. 19 lasted more than 40 minutes.

“I am ashamed at my behavior and I should have been more professional and kept things appropriate,” Pierson testified to what was on the video of the Sept. 12 stop. “... There was a younger, good-looking girl flirting with me and it felt good and I didn’t want it to end.”

That woman testified last week that she was not flirting with Pierson but having a conversation — which she admitted got inappropriate at times — trying to avoid a speeding ticket. That woman, like the other two, was given a written warning.

In the stop on Oct. 19, 2015, the woman testified that Pierson saw a photo on her phone of her in a bra. On Monday, Pierson testified that the woman was naked in the photo. Shortly after seeing that photo, Pierson disabled the microphone on his uniform, according to the dash-cam video.

All of Pierson’s 542 citations written in the year prior to the incident on Feb. 14, 2016, were introduced into evidence by the defense. Consistent with Harris County Sheriff’s policy, most of the tickets were warnings. He wrote 479 warnings and 63 tickets that required the person to pay a fine or appear in court.

After the state closed its case with Jolley spending 15 minutes on the stand testifying to department procedures and protocols and clarifying parts of testimony from earlier in the trial, Brody moved for a directed verdict on a number of the charges.

He introduced case law saying that a traffic stop did not constitute custody in the true definition of the word. He also questioned whether Pierson was to be held to the oath of his office, because he took a verbal oath and there was no signed oath on file.

This story was originally published August 28, 2017 at 5:54 PM with the headline "Ex-Harris County deputy testifies, sobs while saying sex act was consensual."