MARIANNA — Christina Pumphrey started hearing whispers about Jackson County Deputy Zachary Wester not long after joining the State Attorney’s Office.

“You can’t trust him,” a couple of assistant public defenders told her. “You’ve got to watch him. Our clients are complaining about him."

Pumphrey, who spent nearly 15 years as a state government lawyer, went to work for the 14th Judicial Circuit prosecutor’s office in early May. A native of nearby Blountstown, she was a familiar face at the courthouse on Lafayette Street, where she had done trial work for the Department of Children and Families’ child welfare section.

She was assigned to simple drug possession cases. After the warnings about Wester, she started taking a closer look at his traffic stops and arrests. She read his reports and made a habit of pulling his body-camera videos. She noticed something was off — among other things, his written accounts of the stops didn't always match what she could see with her own eyes on the body camera footage.

The back story

Pumphrey didn’t set out to become a whistleblower. But after sharing her concerns about Wester with higher-ups, she set off a chain reaction that ultimately led to his firing, her resignation and the recent dismissal of nearly 120 cases involving the ex-deputy.

The revelations exposed serious cracks in the criminal justice system in Jackson County. Until Pumphrey’s arrival, it appears no one was closely monitoring Wester’s body camera videos, one of which shows him with possible drugs in his hand before conducting a search of a pickup truck.

The Wester case prompted Jackson County Judge Wade Mercer to inform prosecutors and public defenders he will no longer accept pleas in felony cases at arraignment. Before that, defendants often agreed to plea deals during those early court appearances, something that short-circuited discovery and ended cases quickly before attorneys could review all the evidence.

In a Sept. 18 letter to the State Attorney’s Office and the Public Defender’s Office, Mercer wrote it was apparent “no one was taking time to review the videos that have led to the rash of recent dismissals.” He said he wanted to do what he can to make sure “quick pleas at arraignment” don’t contribute to future errors.

He also praised Pumphrey.

“I am extremely thankful that A.S.A. Pumphrey’s diligence led to the discovery of these apparently inappropriate actions of a law enforcement officer,” Mercer wrote, “and I cannot help but wonder if this might have been caught sooner if more time was spent thoroughly reviewing our cases by both the state and defense but also by the court.”

Pumphrey’s concerns about Wester went up the chain of command at the State Attorney’s Office and eventually were forwarded on to the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office, which launched an internal review. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement is conducting its own investigation. No charges have been filed.

Pumphrey, meanwhile, decided to leave the State Attorney’s Office, a job she loved. She put in her notice earlier this month. Her last day was Friday.

On Thursday, Pumphrey filed a whistleblower retaliation complaint with the Florida Commission on Human Relations against State Attorney Glenn Hess. Because she was a state employee, the complaint is a necessary prelude to a possible lawsuit against the state attorney. Her complaint says she was “ostracized and ignored” after raising red flags about Wester.

“Plaintiff was told by her superiors that things were blowing up and she was yelled at about finding the evidence showing that criminal charges had been fabricated,” her complaint says. “Plaintiff was also told by her supervisor that she was messing up investigations by dismissing cases.”

Hess, however, noted that state prosecutors have been sounding alarm bells about a lack of manpower to review an "avalanche" of body camera video coming in from law enforcement agencies. He also said Pumphrey's complaint will not hold up to scrutiny.

"Ms. Pumphrey was a rookie prosecutor who was in over her head and failed to follow the directions of her highly experienced supervisors," he said in a text message. "As for the judge, ya just gotta love him."

‘Something doesn’t feel right’

Pumphrey, a seasoned attorney in her first criminal prosecution job, had a number of open cases before her during her first days on the job. She decided to start reviewing body camera videos from Wester arrests in cases that hadn’t yet progressed to plea deals.

“To start with, it was a lot of something doesn’t feel right,” she said in an interview with the Tallahassee Democrat. “And then it was he just searched this car and he had no legal reason to search the car.”

One video, from a June 7 traffic stop, appeared particularly off.

Wester pulled over a van with a couple in the front seat and two small children in the back. After calling for assistance, a drug-sniffing dog alerted on the front driver’s side, allowing Wester to search. He told an officer the front passenger, Kimberly Hazelwood, was acting suspiciously.

At one point, Wester picked up an Excedrin bottle from the floorboard and examined it before tossing it back. Later, he took it back to his cruiser and tested it before delivering the the news to Hazelwood. The bottle was positive for methamphetamine. She was under arrest.

Pumphrey, later reviewing the video, found Hazelwood perfectly calm, contrary to Wester’s description. She noticed Wester conducted the field test so quickly the footage from that part of the video appeared to run in fast motion. Her gut told her the bottle was empty. The field test, she figured, was a charade.

“I watched it a couple of times, and it just wasn’t there,” she said. “I don’t think there was anything in the bottle. I think — and I’m saying ‘I think’ because there’s no evidence — I think the meth went in the bottle after she got arrested and before it went to the lab.”

Unlike others Wester arrested during his two years at the Sheriff’s Office, Hazelwood had a squeaky clean record. She told Wester her only vices were cigarettes and Dr. Pepper, Pumphrey said.

Hazelwood was arrested on possession of meth and paraphernalia and released after spending a few days behind bars, according to court records. Pumphrey dropped the charges in early July. But that didn’t erase the stain and stigma from Wester’s arrest.

“One of the unfortunate things about this is this lady had no criminal history at all,” Pumphrey said. “She didn’t have a driving ticket. But if anybody pulls her criminal history now, she’s got an arrest for meth.”

Pumphrey said she has no idea why Wester would do what he’s accused of doing.

“He deserves to be in prison,” she said. “He put people in prison. And I’m not saying they were all innocent because they weren’t. It’s as if he stole things from people. He did it in a roundabout way. But he stole people’s livelihood. He stole their freedom. He stole their credibility.”

‘There it is’

After seeing the Hazelwood arrest footage, Pumphrey became convinced Wester was planting drugs. He seemed to target poor, white residents with criminal records, people no one would believe if they claimed they’d been framed.

She said she went to her supervisor with cases that "didn't feel right" and got various responses.

"But she knew I had some concerns and some very serious concerns about some of the cases,” Pumphrey said.

After an assistant public defender also reached out to the supervisor to express doubt about Wester, the supervisor contacted the Sheriff’s Office. One day in mid-July, after finishing the docket at the courthouse, her supervisor asked if she would be comfortable talking to Lt. Mike Hodges, who oversaw the internal affairs investigation for the Sheriff’s Office.

“I told her, ‘Of course,’ ” Pumphrey said. “So I believe it was probably the next day that he called me, he came by, sat in my office and talked to me. You know, ‘What are you seeing? What’s going on?’ And I told him.”

She said Hodges asked if she could identify the videos she had concerns about and make notes so he would know where to look. She gave him a first batch of five or six videos around July 24, she said. The Sheriff’s Department yanked Wester from patrol duty. Hodges called her Aug. 1 to say the deputy was on administrative leave.

“The Sheriff’s Department got the information, reviewed it, and they acted quickly,” Pumphrey said.

She was told the Sheriff’s Department already had the evidence it needed to fire Wester. But Pumphrey said she felt compelled to keep reviewing his videos.

“It bothered me that this evidence was in the State Attorney’s Office and the state attorney was prosecuting innocent people,” she said. “I’m not saying they had reviewed it and it was knowingly, I’m just saying the evidence was there. And I decided I was not going to let myself be lazy and not finish.”

Around that time, in mid to late August, Pumphrey came across video of a Feb. 15 traffic stop that ended in the arrest of Teresa Odom on charges including possession of meth. She backed up and slowed down the video until she spotted what’s become a smoking gun in the Wester probe — something resembling a baggie in his clenched left hand before his search began.

“There it is,” she thought to herself. “It’s what I’ve known all along. It’s what a lot of people have known.”

She turned the Odom video over to investigators around the end of August. State Attorney Hess acknowledged last week the video caused him to “lose confidence” in Deputy Wester, whom the Sheriff’s Office fired on Sept. 10. But Pumphrey wasn’t sure the video would have an impact.

“Honestly,” she wondered, “will anybody really care?”

No checks and balances

Pumphrey said everyone in the system is responsible for what happened.

The Sheriff’s Department, the State Attorney’s Office and the Public Defender's Office had Wester’s body camera videos in their files, even as arrests, pleas and sentences continued, she said. Pumphrey herself said she let a couple of people plea before she was certain what was going on.

“There are supposed to be checks and balances,” she said. “In this case, OK, there’s a dishonest officer. But there’s still his supervisor at the Sheriff’s Department and whatever quality control program they have in place. There’s the State Attorney’s Office, who’s supposed to be reviewing the evidence. There’s the Public Defender, who’s supposed to be representing the people they defend and if there’s something wrong, filing the appropriate motion. You can’t blame it on one thing.”

She said many of the people Wester arrested fit a profile or had criminal histories.

“There’s an assumption that they’re guilty,” she said. “This person is a frequent flier. I see them often. They were guilty last time. I’m assuming their guilty this time. Some of it gets by because cases are numbers and it’s just processing another file.”

Hess, the state attorney, had a different take. He said the Florida Prosecuting Attorneys Association has been warning for two years that prosecutors don't have enough manpower to review all of the body camera videos. Moreover, he said, they can't possibly store them all.

"But we do provide them to defense counsel, who, after all, should be looking to defend their clients," he said in an email. "The PDs are swamped as well. The videos are great in cases like Jackson County, or in officer shootings, but the state attorneys are not adequately funded to scrutinize the avalanche of videos that are produced."

‘Keep it in the office’

Pumphrey said she enjoyed working for the State Attorney’s Office and loved her colleagues at the courthouse, many of whom she worked with for years during her time with DCF. But she still decided to tender her resignation on Sept. 5.

“I don’t want to work in an environment that allows this to happen,” she said. “I felt that instead of doing what I would call the right thing, there were steps to cover up the office’s involvement. And not necessarily the office’s malicious involvement, but the fact that the office hadn’t been paying attention and let this happen.”

Pumphrey hired Tallahassee attorney Marie Mattox to represent her in the FCHR complaint. Mattox, who has been meeting with a number of potential plaintiffs against the Sheriff’s Department, said Pumphrey should be applauded.

“She is the hero of these folks who never should have been charged to begin with,” said Mattox, who’s already filed at least one notice of intent to sue the Sheriff’s Department.

Pumphrey said she may have been allowed to stay on at the State Attorney’s Office. But she doubted she had much of a future after bringing Wester’s arrests to light.

“One of the constant repetitive comments was, ‘We don’t talk to anybody. Keep it in the office,’ ” she said. “What I took it to mean was everybody keeps their mouth shut and the public doesn’t find out.”