Judge eyes May 21 for Sean Williams child porn trial

GREENEVILLE, Tenn. (WJHL) — The judge overseeing Sean Williams’ federal child pornography production trial wants it to start May 21 and be combined with a charge related to Williams’ Oct. 18, 2023 escape from a prison transport van.

COMPLETE COVERAGE OF THE SEAN WILLIAMS CASE

Federal Judge Ronnie Greer said the prosecution’s possibility of tying Williams’ escape to an effort to “prove consciousness of guilt” in the child sex crimes case was one logical reason to try those together. Currently, Williams’ child pornography production trial is set to begin March 26, and he is scheduled to be tried May 21 on the escape count and a separate alleged attempted escape that occurred in July 2023.

Williams is also at the center of two federal civil suits against Johnson City, one filed by a former federal prosecutor in June 2022, the other on behalf of multiple alleged rape victims in June 2023. Both suits center around alleged incompetence and/or corruption by the Johnson City Police Department as multiple reports of Williams drugging and raping women in his downtown apartment were being made between 2019 and 2021. The city has denied all allegations in both suits.

One reason for Monday’s status hearing was for Greer to hear defense attorney Joseph McAfee’s motion to push the child pornography trial date back, an outcome that appears almost certain. McAfee, Williams’ third attorney so far, was appointed Dec. 21, 2023.

Greer gave his opinion during a hearing he called “to talk a little bit about logistics and see where we are” in the multiple, intersecting cases of the 52-year-old former downtown Johnson City man.

Williams’ federal charges in East Tennessee include one count of attempted escape and one count of escape, which occurred in July and October of 2023. They are tied together in one indictment that dates to 2021.

A separate indictment from September 2023 — after the alleged attempted escape but before the actual escape Oct. 18, 2023 — charges Williams with three counts of child pornography production.

Greer said if prosecutors are considering an effort to show the October escape can “prove consciousness of guilt” in the child sex charges, “it just makes some sense to me to try both of them together.”

That move would involve “severing” the October escape charge from its current case with the attempted escape so it could be tried concurrently with the child sex charges.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Meghan Gomez and Joseph McAfee, Williams’ appointed attorney, both seemed agreeable to the idea.

Another judge recently okayed a request by McAfee to delay the trial until May 21 on the escape and attempted escape charges, given his need to catch up on the facts of the case.

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McAfee has also requested a delay in the child pornography trial to give him time to review what he describes as “voluminous” discovery materials. Those are primarily in the form of digital video and photographic evidence allegedly found on hard drives and other devices Western Carolina University police claim Williams was holding when they arrested him April 29, 2023 on drug charges.

Federal prosecutors are primarily basing their child pornography case on that alleged evidence. A search warrant affidavit claims the data includes video and images of child rapes as well as similar evidence allegedly showing Williams raping more than 50 different women, who appear to be drugged, in his Johnson City apartment.

McAfee told Greer he has found a forensic expert in East Tennessee who can review the evidence, which should make a motions deadline of late March feasible for him. That expert will probably have to travel to an FBI office to view the files, which McAfee said are on about eight different drives.

Greer told prosecutors and Williams’ attorney that approach made the most sense to him and asked the attorneys to let him know by Feb. 26 whether they agreed. Asked how long they expected to need for the envisioned combined trial, including cross-examination, Gomez said three days and McAfee said four.

How we got here

Williams’ first federal count in Tennessee’s Eastern District Court isn’t even being prosecuted anymore — a felon in possession of ammunition charge that Johnson City police unsuccessfully attempted to serve on Williams May 5, 2021.

Weeks after a woman named Mikayla Evans fell from Williams’ fifth-story apartment window in September 2020, Johnson City police had asked Kat Dahl, a federal prosecutor assigned to help them take certain cases federal, to help prosecute Williams. They had allegedly found ammunition while searching the convicted felon’s safe during the course of investigating Evans’ fall.

Dahl came into the case and quickly learned of the sexual assault and drugging allegations. Her lawsuit claims she pressed police to broaden their investigation into those allegations. That didn’t happen, Dahl got the ammunition indictment in April 2021, and in late June 2021 then-Johnson City Police Chief Karl Turner told Dahl the city wasn’t renewing her contract.

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Dahl’s suit claims she spent several weeks hounding police to serve the warrant until they made the attempt on May 5. It was unsuccessful, and Williams then spent almost two years on the run before Western Carolina University police arrested him on drug charges after finding him in a car in the wee hours of April 29, 2023 during a parking lot sweep.

Less than two months later, attorneys filed a second civil federal suit against Johnson City and several police officers on behalf of nine anonymous alleged victims of Williams. It claims the police corruptly participated in a sex trafficking operation run by Williams and essentially allowed it to continue, allegedly contributing to the harm suffered by his alleged victims.

Dahl’s suit alleging retaliatory discharge and civil rights violations is scheduled for May 2023, though a judge hasn’t yet ruled on the city’s motion to essentially dismiss it.

The so-called Jane Does lawsuit is scheduled for trial in April 2025. Plaintiffs’ attorneys have amended it to seek class action status and add additional defendants from the police department, and are awaiting a judge’s ruling on those requests. The city has opposed them.

Johnson City and other defendants deny all the allegations in both civil lawsuits.

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