Federal raid nothing new for Claiborne sheriff, whose legal battles span decades

NEW TAZEWELL, Tenn. – David Ray knows all the sides of the system.

The three-time Claiborne County sheriff has sat in every seat in the courtroom over his 50-year career – from the prosecution table to the judge's bench to the defendant's chair.

He smiled and waved to reporters Tuesday as agents serving a federal search warrant raided his offices at the county Justice Center. Whatever happens, he's been here before.

Every time, he's walked away to fight another day.

Financial records seized

Authorities won't say why agents of the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation descended on the justice center just as employees opened for business, except that it's part of a federal investigation.

More: Claiborne County sheriff's finance records seized in federal raid

A TBI spokeswoman referred all questions to federal prosecutors, who aren't talking, either. No arrests have been made and no charges filed.

Agents also seized Sheriff's Office records from the county finance office on Main Street, Finance Director Sam Owens said. He said agents didn't give him a reason – just a federal judge's order to turn over the records.

"They picked up all the vendor checks for the past five years," Owens said.

The sheriff hasn't returned calls since the raid and hasn't offered any answers.

"There's been a lot of rumors going around, but we're not ready to say anything," he said Tuesday. "When we're ready, you'll be the first one we call."

A family tradition

Ray might tell you he was born into law enforcement.

His father, Cecil Ray, spent years in the police profession. Ray grew up here and still lives in his home community of Speedwell, Tenn., near the Claiborne-Campbell county line.

The son followed his father's path into the Tennessee Highway Patrol in 1969 and from there to the TBI in 1973.

He spent the next decade working high-profile cases across East Tennessee, from bank robberies to murders to the 1977 manhunt when James Earl Ray, the convicted assassin of Martin Luther King, and six other inmates escaped from Brushy Mountain Prison in Morgan County.

Holding court

Ray left the TBI in the wake of a controversial double-murder case in Hawkins County to win election as General Sessions judge for his home county in 1982. He had no law degree. State law didn't require one for the job at the time.

A federal grand jury indicted Ray in May 1986 on charges of taking kickbacks to turn a blind eye to poker machines in local businesses. FBI agents claimed the scheme began within a month of Ray's being sworn in as judge years earlier.

Ray didn't offer to step down from the bench – even when confronted with undercover tapes.

"He smiled at reporters when asked if he would continue to hold court," a News Sentinel story on his arrest notes.

Ray fought the charges all the way to trial and took the witness stand to denounce the case as a setup. A jury agreed and found him not guilty.

Toxic surfing and deer hunting

Ray held court until 1998, when he lost the judge's seat to John McAfee. He ran unsuccessfully for sheriff in 2002 and won the badge four years later in 2006.

The new sheriff made national news within weeks of taking office when his deputies worked the case of two package store workers in Cumberland Gap killed by William Ashby, a spree killer who went by the nickname "Toxic Surfer" on Myspace and left a trail of bodies across the Southeast before shooting himself at the end of a high-speed police chase in Florida.

Two months later, a 17-year-old girl accused Ray of raping her on two deer hunting trips in neighboring Hancock County.

The girl claimed in a federal lawsuit Ray threatened her with his county-issued service weapon and forced her to perform oral sex, then wiped himself off with a napkin and tossed it at her. The first rape, she claimed, happened when she was 15 years old.

TBI agents asked Ray to give them a statement and a DNA sample, "and the matter could be cleared up," according to court records.

"I ain't giving you nothing," came the reply.

Near misses

A grand jury indicted Ray on charges of sexual assault and statutory rape. He denied the girl's story from the start, and his lawyers argued she had a history of making false accusations.

Attorneys settled the lawsuit with the girl. On the eve of trial in August 2008, prosecutor Berkeley Bell agreed to pretrial diversion for the sheriff – an arrangement that wiped away the charges upon completion of two years' probation.

Three months later, Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency officers cited Ray for shooting a deer without a license on the county fairgrounds across the street from the justice center. The sheriff told officers he wanted the venison to feed inmates.

The misdemeanor charge didn't affect his probation. David Ray paid a $290.27 fine and walked away again.

The people's sheriff

The sheriff's legal battles haven't hurt him at the ballot box. He's won re-election twice since 2006. He'll be on the ballot again this November for a fourth time.

He walks around town with an air that's a mix of beat patrolman and old-time politician - always time for one more handshake, one more story, one more chance to make an impression. If you're from Claiborne County, chances are he can spot you at 20 paces and knows not just you, but your parents and your grandparents.

He's a regular at his favorite lunch spot, the Old Town Grill, where every waitress knows his name and customers walk up to ask what officers can do about drug problems in their neighborhoods. The sheriff never turns down a tip.

He loves to talk about the work his deputies do, about the pill problem that ravages his county, about the ministries to jail inmates he's championed and the struggles of the modern-day small-town sheriff. He'll spin stories from the cases he's worked over the decades, show off souvenirs, even drop the occasional reference to his legal battles – indicted, yes, but never convicted.

But he's not talking about Tuesday's raid – not yet.