They voted to dissolve the Greyfield Police Department entirely and contract law enforcement to the county sheriff's office. 19 Officers, all terminated. The department that Wade Thornton had called his kingdom for 22 years ceased to exist on a Tuesday afternoon with a 7 to1 vote. The federal grand jury convened the following month. The charges Sergeant Wade Thornton four counts.
Deprivation of civil rights under color of law. Sexual assault. Unlawful detention. Conspiracy to obstruct justice. Officer Brett Lawson.
Three counts. Deprivation of civil rights, accessory to sexual assault, destruction of evidence, the photo he took of Nicole on his phone, which he tried to delete after the arrest. The FBI recovered it. Officer Kyle Greer, three counts. Deprivation of civil rights, accessory to sexual assault, use of excessive force.
The photos became the prosecution's most powerful evidence. Not the body cam, not the dash cam, the selfies. Two officers grinning, holding up their phones while a woman lay pinned beneath them. The prosecutor displayed them on a screen in the courtroom. Full size, no cropping, no blurring.
These photos were not taken by journalists, she told the jury. They were not taken by witnesses. They were taken by the defendants as trophies. She let the word hang. Trophies.
One juror, a woman in her 30s, looked at Lawson's face in the photo, then at Lawson sitting at the defense table. Same grin. She looked away, wrote something on her notepad. The defense objected to the photos being shown. The judge overruled.
The defendants chose to create this evidence. They can live with it. The trial lasted 9 days. Thornton's lawyer argued that the patown was standard procedure and that Thornton's language, while regrettable, did not constitute a civil rights violation. He played the body cam footage in court, intending to show that the search was routine.
It backfired. The jury watched 14 minutes of footage in silence. One juror, a retired teacher, covered her mouth when Lawson read the get well card. Another juror, a man in his 50s, looked at Thornton and shook his head. Nicole was called as a witness.
She wore a black suit, no red dress. She sat in the witness chair, the same kind of chair she usually sat above behind the bench, and answered every question in the same voice she used to deliver verdicts. The prosecutor asked her, "Judge Shaw, when Officer Greer put his hand over your mouth, what were you thinking?" Nicole paused, looked at the jury. I was thinking about every woman who didn't have a sister with a panic button. The courtroom went quiet.
The verdict came back on a Thursday afternoon. Guilty. All counts. All three officers. Thornton, 8 years federal prison.
No parole. Lawson, 3 years federal prison. Greer, four years federal prison. When the verdict was read, Thornton stared straight ahead. No expression.
Lawson put his head on the table. Greer's wife sobbed in the gallery. Nicole and Audrey sat in the third row. Not at the prosecution table, not behind the bench. Just two women in the gallery holding hands.