The Police Reports
Most of what the State knew about the women who accused Daniel came from reports that Det. Gregory and Det. Davis wrote after interviewing them. Prosecutors worked from those reports. The defense received them in discovery. The detectives testified based on them. They were summaries, not transcripts. Key interview recordings contain details the detectives omitted.
Drafted in Word, revised before approval, with no audit trail of the edits.
Oklahoma City officers write their reports in a records system called VARUNA. When an officer starts a report there, the system stamps it with the date it was opened; that is the “typed” date in the trailer at the bottom of every page. The report stays open while the officer works on it. When a supervisor signs off, the trailer gets an approval date and the text is locked. Between those two dates the author can change anything in it, and VARUNA does not show when a report was reopened or changed. Muzny Dep. 117:8–17; Davis Dep. 209:1–9; see the trailer on any page of Scott Adams 01126–30. That is the ordinary way. In this case the detectives often did not use it.
Lt. Timothy Muzny, who ran Sex Crimes, testified that in officer-involved cases command told detectives to write their reports in Word instead. He said he sometimes keyed Gregory’s reports into the records system himself from Gregory’s files, and that the system keeps no history of when anyone reopened or changed a report. Muzny Dep. 117:8–119:11 (Mar. 26, 2019). Davis said she wrote hers “50/50,” some in Word and some in the system, with “no rhyme or reason,” and that she could keep saving over a report in the system until a supervisor approved it. Davis Dep. 206:9–209:9 (Jan. 29, 2019). Gregory, shown a report that named Muzny as the typist, said Muzny “didn’t type any reports for us,” that he had put it in himself, maybe “cut and paste… from Word.” Gregory Dep. 103:3–104:13 (Jan. 17, 2019).
Gregory described how he worked in the Morris case. On June 18, fifteen days after he had first talked to Terri Morris at the jail, he sat down to write up that conversation. Muzny walked in with news of “another officer involved.” Gregory put the report aside and later “had to start making changes to it.” “We’ll leave reports open until we’re able to go back, review them, finish them out.” Gregory Dep. 255:8–256:19.
So the “typed” date on one of his reports is the day he opened it, not the day he finished it. He dated report 002 in the Morris file June 5, 2014; Muzny approved it August 26, and what Gregory wrote in it happened in August. He dated the report of his search for Morris June 6, and ended it by citing a jail visit he made on July 10. Scott Adams 01118; 01130. Lt. Michelle Holland, the patrol lieutenant who heard Morris describe the officer on the night of May 24, did not write that description down until June 25, a week after Jannie Ligons came forward. Scott Adams 01125.
Gregory’s search report gets its own page, A Rocky Timeline. Here, the rest: what the detectives wrote, next to what the women said on tape.
Gregory told the reader to check the video. He left out what was on it.
Gregory interviewed Hill on camera on September 19, 2014. He wrote eight pages and ended them: “For any discrepancies regarding this interview see DVD for further information.” OCPD Supp. Rpt. 14-078745 (001), Scott Adams 00607–14. On the DVD, after the interview seems to be over, Hill stands up, raises her hands and says: “Is that good evidence? Even if he didn’t rape nobody, he’s still contacting people on Facebook that he’s arrested.” Gregory did not write that down, and he did not ask her what she meant.
Asked about it in 2019, he said he could not remember whether he had put it in: “I recorded it, so I mean, you know, if I record, it’s more of a synopsis on the report.” Asked whether he should have, for completeness: “Not necessarily.” Gregory Dep. 139:20–140:11. At trial Hill was asked whether she had said it. “I’m so disturbed by everything that’s been happening, I probably did say that.” Trial Tr. 1422:20–1424:7. The jury acquitted Daniel on her counts.
Raines told Gregory no at least five times. He wrote none of them down.
Gregory had his recorder running when he first asked Raines whether any officer had been inappropriate with her in the past year. She said no. She kept saying no, at least five times. He put none of it in his report. At trial he called the report a “synopsis,” written “to make it flow for the reader,” and agreed he had left the denials out. The search for accusers; Trial Tr. 2200, 2204–05, 2221–22, 2245–47; OCPD Crime Rpt. (Aug. 15, 2014), Scott Adams 00296–97. The recording is on the accusers page.
In his deposition he said it again, “She did deny it several times in the beginning,” and offered a reason: her mother was nearby, and Raines did not want her to know. Gregory Dep. 133:22–134:25. He did not write that down either.
Davis recorded two interviews. What she wrote up leaves out the parts that cut against the case.
Davis reached Ellis by phone on August 1, 2014, and recorded the call. Ellis told her, of the officer: “He was a black man.” Ellis Phone Interview Tr. 2 (Aug. 1, 2014). Davis wrote up the call without that sentence. OCPD Supp. Rpt. 14-066104 (001), Scott Adams 00790–92.
Four days later she interviewed Ellis on video. This time she wrote the description down: “a black male; muscular (works out); shorter than herself (she is 5'11)… she cannot pick him out of a line-up.” Scott Adams 00795. She left out three things she had said and heard on the tape. She had asked Ellis to compare the officer’s complexion with her own. Ellis said she was light and he was darker, and nodded when Davis asked, “Darker than your skin tone?” Ellis Interview Tr. 10–11 (Aug. 5, 2014). Before she took a DNA swab, Davis told Ellis, “I know what officer did this to you.” And when Ellis worried that a late probation payment would bring a warrant, Davis asked which fine and which county, then said she would call the next day and “find out what we can do.” Ellis Interview Tr. 9–10. None of that is in her report. Daniel is light-skinned.
Three detectives, three accounts of the photo lineup.
Muzny wrote that on June 18, 2014, after he picked up the gas-station video around 3:20 p.m., he built a photo lineup from pictures of Springlake’s second- and third-shift officers; that Davis was “not happy with the lineup”; and that they then met with Deputy Chief Kuhlman, where the AVL check left Daniel as the only officer they could not rule out. Scott Adams 00126. What the CSIs and Davis wrote about that afternoon does not fit his sequence. At 2:15 p.m. a CSI was told to arrange to photograph “the involved officer” at Springlake. Two CSIs were there by 3:45, before Daniel arrived for his shift. Davis wrote that when he arrived he told her he had made the stop and that she “told him we needed to get an updated picture of him,” and the CSI wrote that the pictures were “suitable for a photo lineup.” Scott Adams 00070, 00152, 00158. That evening Ligons’s sister told a relative on the force that the investigators had said they would show Ligons pictures to see whether she could pick the officer out. Scott Adams 00059.
Muzny is the only one of the three who mentions a lineup at all. Davis and Gregory each wrote their way from the AVL result straight to “it was determined that we would speak to Ofc. Holtzclaw.” Scott Adams 00070, 01146. None of them wrote down when or why they dropped the lineup. By 2019 they could not agree on what had happened. Muzny said Davis’s objection “doesn’t ring any bell.” Gregory remembered seeing a lineup but could not say what Davis had objected to. Davis, asked whether Muzny had built one for Ligons, said “No.” Muzny Dep. 223:14–19; Gregory Dep. 141:8–142:10; Davis Dep. 123:3–124:9. Muzny did give a reason for not showing one: “there’s a chance that she could… she would not identify the right person.” Muzny Dep. 224:8–18. The whole afternoon, with everyone’s times, is on the Jannie Ligons page.
Davis told a jailed witness the DA was working on her rehab. Then she wrote that the interview “ended.”
On September 2, 2014, Grate called Detective Valari Homan from the county jail. She said she had “had time to sober up” and had information. Davis and Homan went over that day and recorded her. Davis wrote up what Grate said about her bedroom, a chair, a towel and where to look for evidence, and then closed: “Rosetta talked for several minutes about relapsing and she doesn’t want to do that again. She talked about Will taking care of her granddaughter. The interview lasted several more minutes then ended.” OCPD Supp. Rpt. 14-070895 (008), Scott Adams 00557–58.
The tape has those minutes. Grate, in jail on pending charges, asked the detectives not to tell her boyfriend what they would be looking for in the house. Davis offered, “what if I tell him that we just wanna take some pictures in that room?” Then she told Grate: “we talked to the DA and he’s checking on getting you into that rehab… And I told him it needed to be long-term… if anybody can do it, he can do it.” When Grate asked whether that meant her own case, Davis said the prosecutor “has to get with the Public Defender’s office and work it out with them.” Grate Jail Interview Tr. 11–12 (Sept. 2, 2014). Whether or not anyone ever made a deal, a witness sitting in jail who has just been told the prosecutor is working on long-term rehab for her has a reason to want to help him. Davis did not write any of it down.
Gregory used a map to follow Morris’s story, and left the map out of his report.
Gregory and Muzny interviewed Morris at the county jail on July 10, 2014, and recorded it. At one point Gregory asked Muzny, “Can you get satellite?” Muzny: “Oh, like Google it or something?” Gregory: “Yeah, like, so she can visually see it.” A map came in, and Morris went on describing where she had been with it in front of her. Gregory wrote up the interview as report 018 and said nothing about a map. OCPD Supp. Rpt. 14-041539 (018), Scott Adams 01163–65.
At trial, asked whether Morris was ever shown a map, a satellite photograph or a Google map, Gregory said no. Then: “I misunderstood. Yes, there was a map.” He agreed she had been “referring to a map while she’s talking to you.” Asked whether he had mentioned the map anywhere in his report, he agreed he had not. Asked whether there was a reason he left it out: “No.” Trial Tr. 3278:18–3280:9. On the tape, right after the talk of Googling a map “so she can visually see it,” Morris says, “Right there on the street, right there.” Gregory agreed she seemed to be pointing at something. Trial Tr. 3282:8–24.
On redirect he explained why he wanted the map. He had not pulled the AVL yet and could not follow her: “I didn’t pull up AVL so I really didn’t know where she was exactly talking about.” With the map, “she was trying to point out… just kind of where she was at 24th and Lindsay, how far east.” He was still lost enough afterward that he checked her out of jail “so she could just show me.” Trial Tr. 3305:25–3306:5, 3308:6–20. But he had the AVL. Maj. Wenzel had forwarded Daniel’s May 8 AVL map and radio traffic to Gregory, Muzny and Capt. Bacy on June 2, and Gregory had written up what it showed, placing Daniel at Liberty Station during the May 8 stop, in a supplement he dated June 17, three weeks before he sat down with Morris and the map. Whatever he meant by “I didn’t pull up AVL,” the May 8 AVL had been in his hands, and in his own supplement, for weeks. OKC 05087; Scott Adams 01137–38; Terri Morris. There is nothing wrong with using a map. But Gregory could not follow Morris’s story without one, and then wrote it up as though she had told it on her own. What she said that day, and how it differed from what she had said before, is on the Terri Morris page.
The detectives wrote summaries, and left things out.
In the interviews above, the recordings include a woman saying no at least five times before she said yes. A woman describes the man who assaulted her. A detective tells a witness she already knew which officer it was. A detective offers to see what she can do about another witness’s fines and warrants. A detective tells a witness in jail that the prosecutor is working on her rehab. A witness says, on her way out the door, “even if he didn’t rape nobody.” A map sits on the table while a witness works out where she had been.
All of this affects whether the identifications can be trusted, whether the witnesses should be believed, and what they stood to gain. It also shows how some of the allegations took shape.