Sheriff Mike Jolley takes stand in aggravated sodomy trial of former deputy

A jury that will decide the fate of a former Harris County deputy charged with forcing a woman to perform oral sex on him during a 2016 traffic stop heard Sheriff Mike Jolley on Thursday read a two-page statement in which the deputy admitted the sexual act, but said it was consensual.

Thomas Carl Pierson is facing a dozen charges in Harris County Superior Court ranging from aggravated sodomy to stalking. Pierson’s statement differed from the woman’s testimony Wednesday and earlier Thursday when she told the jury she was forced to perform the act.

Jolley testified for less than an hour, mostly putting the department’s policies and procedures on the record.

The centerpiece of Jolley’s testimony was a written statement Pierson voluntarily gave the sheriff on Feb. 15, 2016, the day after the incident.

Pierson, who was placed on administrative leave the day before, met with the sheriff and Chief Deputy Neil Adams that day. By that time, Jolley had made the decision to turn the case over the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.

“He was shaken and apologetic,” Jolley said of the deputy he has known since Pierson was a boy. “He said that he was sorry he had embarrassed me and he was sorry that he had embarrassed the office.”

It took Jolley about 10 minutes, with brief stops and starts, to read the two-page letter into the record. As Jolley read the letter, Pierson sat at the defense table, looking down from time to time.

In the letter, Pierson described the details of the traffic stop. He admitted to pulling over the woman twice and issuing a warning citation for speeding.

“While still on Ga. Highway 85 I turned my blue lights on to get her to pull over again,” Pierson wrote in the statement of the second stop after a warning ticket had been issued for going 68 miles per hour in a 55 mph zone. “I turned off my camera, as this was not an official traffic stop.”

Jolley testified that according to department policy the dash-cam video is considered evidence and it is against the policy to turn it off. One of the charges against Pierson is tampering with evidence.

During the first stop, the woman had called the deputy an “asshole” after he gave her the warning ticket and told her he wanted her to sweat it out, according to the audio from that stop. There was no audio of Pierson’s conversation with the woman on the second stop.

After calling the deputy the name, the woman said she was sorry and that she had no filter. Pierson addressed that in the letter, but his account was different from the victim’s.

The deputy said he asked the woman during the second stop what she would say to him if she had no filter.

“She said that I was hot and it could be a lot of fun,” the deputy wrote in his statement. “I told her there was a road just ahead ... that we could go down and talk if we wanted to. She said, ‘OK.’”

That was not how the woman described it under oath on Wednesday.

“He told me to pull into a side road. ...,” the woman testified. “I had three seconds to decide, ‘Do I follow or what do I do?’ I thought I had to.”

She said she followed him and he pulled her from the car and forced her to do the sexual act.

Pierson admitted to the oral sex, saying it was consensual, according to the statement. Jolley testified that it was against the department’s policy to have sex while on duty.

The prosecution used the Harris County Sheriff’s Office to make its case on Thursday. In addition to Jolley and Adams, then lieutenant and now Chief Deputy Chris Walden and Detective Tracie Grizzard also took the stand Thursday on the second day of testimony. Walden interviewed Pierson on the day of the incident and Grizzard went to Pike County to interview the victim.

Pierson “appeared to be shocked,” Walden said of the deputy being confronted with the allegations at the end of his shift.

“He slouched in his chair, dropped his head and took a couple of deep, heavy breaths,” Walden said. “... He adamantly denied anything inappropriate had happened.”

Perison was then asked to go into the bathroom with Walden after the Harris County deputies received a description of Pierson’s underwear from the women accuser. The boxer shorts were blue plaid, matching the woman’s description, Walden said.

Adams then asked Pierson if there was anything else he wanted to tell them, Walden testified.

“He said it was consensual,” Walden said. “He dropped his head, started crying and became extremely emotional.”

That woman, who alleges that Pierson forced her to perform oral sex on him during a Feb. 14, 2016, traffic stop on Ga. 85 near Waverly Hall, spent more than four hours on the witness stand on Wednesday and was back on the stand under cross examination by Pierson’s attorney, Bernard S. Brody of Atlanta.

During the final minutes of the woman’s testimony, the defense also introduced 19 Facebook profile photos the woman posted between March 2016 and July 2017. The defense was pointing out she was still active on social media despite telling investigators she was going to deactivate her account.

“I didn’t know it was illegal to post Facebook selfies,” the woman answered Brody during the question.

She said her primary concern was media attention because of the high profile nature of the accusation against a law enforcement officer.

“I was concerned about the media and I still am today,” she said.

Prior to the resumption of testimony, the defense argued unsuccessfully out of the presence of the jury to have information about the woman’s work history and a 2014 bankruptcy filing introduced.

Brody argued that the bankruptcy went to possible motive because she has since indicated that she plans to file a civil suit against Harris County over the incident.

The defense also has subpoenaed a former boyfriend of the woman claiming the sexual assault. Brody said the woman had contacted the former boyfriend through text and a phone call.

“She got nervous, texted and told him they needed to speak,” Brody said.

The defense argued that the victim was trying to clean up false statements he alleges she made to investigators.

Peters was clear he was not going to allow such testimony on its face.

“She is not on trial here; he is,” Peters told Brody. “To go into her private life, who she dated and why they broke up, I am not going to allow it.”

The trial will resume Friday morning at 8:30 a.m. at the Harris County Courthouse in Hamilton. The prosecution told the judge it could likely rest its case Friday. Two other women who have accused Pierson of inappropriate behavior are likely to testify, Assistant District Attorney Bill Lisenby Jr. said.

Those two women were also stopped by Pierson, but did not accuse him of any sexual crimes.

This story was originally published August 24, 2017 at 6:02 PM with the headline "Sheriff Mike Jolley takes stand in aggravated sodomy trial of former deputy."