IAPE Evidence Blog

NewsChan­nel 5 WTVF-TV Nashville TN, newschannel5.com
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David­son County and Wil­son County, TN

John Patrick Edwards

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — A for­mer Wil­son County Sheriff’s Office Lieu­tenant has been charged with mul­ti­ple crimes all com­mit­ted while he was serv­ing as a police officer.

John Patrick Edwards, 39 was indicted by both the David­son County and Wil­son County grand juries on mul­ti­ple charges, includ­ing attempted first degree mur­der, aggra­vated kid­nap­ping, aggra­vated rob­bery, money laun­der­ing, and theft over $10,000 to name a few.

In March of 2011 the Ten­nessee Bureau of Inves­ti­ga­tion began inves­ti­gat­ing Edwards after alle­ga­tions of theft and domes­tic vio­lence began to surface.

The TBI inves­ti­ga­tion found that not only had Edwards tried to kill his wife by poi­son­ing her, but he was also involved in numer­ous crim­i­nal acts span­ning sev­eral years.

“Edwards is accused of claim­ing to wit­ness a drug deal between two men, then pro­ceeded to hold them at gun­point, falsely arrested them and seized their vehi­cles and cash,” said TBI Spokesper­son Kris­ten Helm.

The TBI went on to explain that Edward also stole mar­i­juana from the Wil­son County Sheriff’s Office evi­dence room and sold it for per­sonal profit, he sold con­fi­den­tial infor­ma­tion to the tar­get of a drug inves­ti­ga­tion and he forged doc­u­ments in an attempt to claim own­er­ship of items seized by the Sheriff’s Department.

Offi­cials said that in Octo­ber of 2007 Edwards also bur­glar­ized the res­i­dence of his for­mer girl­friend and then gave the stolen items to his wife as gifts.

Edwards was indicted by the Wil­son County grand jury on one count of attempted first degree mur­der, two counts of aggra­vated kid­nap­ping, two counts of aggra­vated rob­bery, seven counts of money laun­der­ing, two counts of offi­cial mis­con­duct, two counts of fab­ri­ca­tion of evi­dence, three counts of theft over $10,000 and one count of tam­per­ing with evidence. 

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Inter­na­tional Asso­ci­a­tion for Prop­erty and Evi­dence
“Law Enforce­ment Serv­ing the Needs of Law Enforce­ment”
www.IAPE.org

jacksonsun.com
BYLINE: Lau­ren Foreman

Jack­son, TN

A Chicago native has been con­victed of rap­ing a Jack­son woman in a 1997 case that took author­i­ties 13 years to put together using DNA analy­sis and a cre­ative strat­egy for prosecutors.

Last month, Madi­son County Judge Don Allen sen­tenced Joseph Davi­son to 24 years in prison for the crime. Allen required that Davi­son serve 85 per­cent of the sen­tence, accord­ing to a news release from Jack­son Police Chief Gill Kendrick.

Jack­son police have called the rape con­vic­tion an unprece­dented cross-state case in which they charged a DNA pro­file of an unknown rape sus­pect to get things mov­ing before the statute of lim­i­ta­tions per­ma­nently closed the case.

“At the time the assault occurred in 1997, DNA pro­fil­ing was still an up and com­ing sci­ence here,” Kendrick stated in the news release. The 1997 case was the first of its kind in Madi­son County.

On June 27, 1997, an intruder who had qui­etly entered a Jack­son woman’s Arling­ton Avenue home “threat­ened her, cov­ered her face with pil­lows and raped her,” accord­ing to the news release.

Jack­son offi­cials could not find the man but entered DNA gath­ered from the crime scene into an index sys­tem that did not come up with a match until 2010.

“By ini­ti­at­ing a pros­e­cu­tion against the principal’s genetic iden­tity (even though we did not know his name at the time), we stopped the statute of lim­i­ta­tions from run­ning out, ” Kendrick said in the release.

Work­ers at a Ten­nessee Bureau of Inves­ti­ga­tion lab in Nashville noti­fied the Jack­son Police Depart­ment of a match with Joseph Davi­son in August 2010.

Davi­son had left Jack­son for Chicago in 2006 after being con­victed of aggra­vated bur­glary and attempted rape charges, charges that occurred before a 1998 Ten­nessee law requir­ing con­victed felons to pro­vide DNA samples.

The Chicago Police Depart­ment arrested Davi­son on Nov. 26, 2010. And a change in Illi­nois law had strength­ened that state’s author­ity to col­lect sam­ples from cer­tain offenders.

“DNA has changed the whole out­look on cases like this,” Jack­son Police Capt. Mike Holt said. “Had we not done some­thing, we wouldn’t have been able to prosecute.”

Since the 1997 case, Jack­son police have issued about four of the ‘John Doe’ war­rants a year.

“And they are not all sex­ual assault cases,” Holt said. He said some war­rants con­cern burglaries.

Holt said he hoped local imple­men­ta­tion of “John Doe war­rants” would set a prece­dent for other cities and inspire leg­isla­tive changes regard­ing statutes of lim­i­ta­tion and DNA evidence.

“I think it reaf­firms the impor­tance to us in law enforce­ment that even when we don’t know who the sus­pect is, we have to do every­thing right to keep those cases viable,” Holt said. “In hopes that there will be jus­tice some day.”

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Inter­na­tional Asso­ci­a­tion for Prop­erty and Evi­dence
“Law Enforce­ment Serv­ing the Needs of Law Enforce­ment”
www.IAPE.org

The Asso­ci­ated Press State & Local Wire, STATE AND REGIONAL

Hawkins County, TN

The Ten­nessee Bureau of Inves­ti­ga­tion has arrested a Hawkins County sheriff’s deputy on theft and related charges.

The TBI said in a news release Thurs­day night that 42-year-old Brad Depew of Church Hill was booked into the Hawkins County Jail after a search war­rant was exe­cuted at his home look­ing for miss­ing nar­cotics and other evi­dence from the sheriff’s office.

He was charged with one count of bur­glary, one count of theft and one count of tam­per­ing with evi­dence.
The TBI said Depew was a night shift deputy.

Inves­ti­ga­tors said they received a request last week from the Dis­trict Attor­ney Gen­eral to look into miss­ing items fromthe evi­dence room in March.

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Inter­na­tional Asso­ci­a­tion for Prop­erty and Evi­dence
“Law Enforce­ment Serv­ing the Needs of Law Enforce­ment”
www.IAPE.org