PANAMA CITY — Discussions of whether a Freeport man wielded a chainsaw before being gunned down by a Walton County deputy bogged down Wednesday’s federal lawsuit proceedings to decide whether the officer used excessive force in the shooting.
U.S. District Court Judge Mark E. Walker allowed defense attorneys to use dispatch recordings and testimony regarding the chainsaw, allegedly wielded by Jeffrey Weekley moments before being gunned down in an area of secluded woods in Freeport.
Family members of Weekley have filed a federal lawsuit against Deputy Nick Embry, claiming he used excessive force against Weekley, and Walton County Sheriff Michael Adkinson, claiming he did not discipline Embry in the wake of the 2009 shooting.
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Plaintiff’s attorneys also raised concerns that WCSO tampered with official record times during the shooting, which only Embry and the deceased Weekley witnessed.
Embry testified Wednesday information he received from dispatch about of Weekley possibly being armed and intoxicated influenced his state of alert while responding to a domestic disturbance at the end of Pope Street. Walker allowed discussion of the chainsaw under the caveat that Embry’s attorney not imply Weekley intended to assault the person calling in the disturbance.
“There hasn’t been a wink, wink implication that he was running around like the Chainsaw Massacre,” Walker said. “It is relevant. It shows there is a chainsaw and these folks are not just making this up.”
However, Walker abruptly dismissed the jury and rebuked Embry’s defense attorneys after he became concerned their line of questioning was verging on accusation.
“These people aren’t morons,” Walker said. “They may not be lawyers but this jury is not made up of morons.”
Whether jurors would hear evidence about the chainsaw has been heavily debated during the trial. Dispatchers informed Embry, while en route to the scene, that Weekley was running the chainsaw. They also informed him Weekley usually carried a pocketknife and was intoxicated. Shortly after, dispatch said he’d put away the chainsaw.
Walker then gave jurors specific instructions that the attorneys had not “suggested Weekely was assaulting anybody with a chainsaw,” and Walker also prompted attorneys to explicitly ask Embry if he was at any point concerned about the chainsaw — to which Embry responded, “no.”
Between the time Embry arrived at 5:25 p.m. on Aug. 3, 2009, and 5:33 when he reported “shots fired … subject came after me with a knife,” no other official accounts exist of what transpired before Weekley lay dead on the ground. Dispatchers checked Embry’s welfare once at 5:29. He said he was searching for Weekley at that time.
Embry testified that in those four minutes he found Weekley, confronted him and shot him twice in the chest.
“As he pulled his hands out of his pockets, I shot twice — double tap,” Embry said. “When I fired; I saw black hole, black hole and he drew his hands up to his chest and fell backward.”
Plaintiff attorneys have disputed the trajectory of the bullets and blood splatter in the past couple of days in the trial. They raised questions Wednesday of why the Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD) logs only has a window of eight minutes from Embry’s arrival to calling in “shots fired” when a stopwatch running with the actual radio traffic indicates 11 minutes lapsed.
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Deputy James Rowell, one of the few officers privileged to the CAD logs, conducted WCSO’s internal investigation into the shooting. He said the program used weeded out portions of radio silence.
“Sometimes it omits dead air,” Rowell said “… When officers key up and start talking, it’s recording. It is not going to record dead space.”
Several other officers testified that no discussions of the events occurred and no one advised Embry of what to say or do afterward.