Only because he was tired of being questioned did a former DeKalb County police officer admitted to having sexual contact with two women while on duty, his attorney said Tuesday, but he did not understand that his words could be used to prosecute him.
Jeremy Reynolds, a police officer of almost three years, said he was unfamiliar with the Miranda statement, a warning to a crime suspect that their comments could be used against them.
Reynolds has pleaded not guilty to one count of aggravated sodomy and two counts of violating his oath of office.
A judge said jurors could hear what Reynolds said and see what he wrote in a statement to investigators about allegations that he threatened to arrest a woman if she did not perform oral sex on him and that he arrested another woman because she would not show him her breasts.
“I’m telling you, ladies and gentlemen, I never did that,” Reynolds’ lawyer Jackie Patterson said in his opening statement, delivered as if Reynolds was talking directly to the jury.
According to Assistant District Attorney Leaf Howard, the woman was sitting in the back seat of his patrol car, parked behind a grocery store, and he was standing just outside the car door.
Patterson described the woman — whom The Atlanta Journal-Constitution is not identifying because she is the alleged victim of a sex crime — as a known prostitute who frequently strolled Memorial Drive.
Patterson said Reynolds admitted he asked her to perform sex on him, but he didn’t offer anything in exchange for the favor. “She is a prostitute, a street walker. She solicits business regularly on Memorial Drive. (Reynolds) made the worst judgment of (his) career,” Patterson said.
Again, speaking as if he were Reynolds, Patterson said, “I didn’t give her any money to have sex with me. It was dumb of me. It was stupid of me to ask a citizen to give me oral sex. But that is not a crime. It’s a crime to force someone to have oral sex.”
Prosecutor Howard said Reynolds took advantage of the woman.
“He thought nobody is going to believe her,” Howard said.
The second woman had been stopped for speeding on Interstate 285 on Jan. 22, 2010. Reynolds discovered there was an outstanding warrant from Clayton County, where she was already on probation for speeding, because she had not shown up for court, and prosecutors said he tried to use that as leverage.
He is accused to threatening to arrest her if she did not show him her breasts. At the time, Yvonne Ruiz was handcuffed and in the backseat of his patrol car, Howard said.
Ruiz “was a 20-year-old girl with a husband and kids (who) says ‘no. I’d rather go to jail,’” Howard said. “She starts to cry. He pulls her out of the car. He takes her shirt and lifts it up so her bra is exposed … He pats her down a second time… He does an underhand search where he feels the bottom of her breasts.”
Patterson told the jury Ruiz had told the officer she was going to claim he was inappropriate with her if he arrested her.
“Obviously she didn’t want to go to jail,” Patterson said.
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