The officer will be suspended
for only a third of the time the Florida teen was wrongly jailed
NATASHA LENNAR
Owing to a name mixup by a
Florida police officer, an innocent teen spent 35 days in jail for child rape
charges. Cody Lee Williams, 18, was confused by the cop as Cody Raymond
Williams.
While the innocent Williams
spent over a month in jail for the mistake, the officer — Deputy Sheriff Johnny
Hawkins — will spend only a fraction of that time suspended as punishment (he
will be suspended for 10 days without pay). The New York Daily News reported:
In a letter following the
investigation, Sheriff Rick Beseler told Hawkins that because of his
incompetence, “an innocent man was arrested for an offense that he did not
commit.”
The mistake wasn’t discovered
until the teen looked into court documents detailing the charges.
According to the investigation,
Hawkins interviewed the little girl, who said she was assaulted by a high
school boy named Cody Williams, but never showed her any photos to confirm the
boy’s identity.
Williams told the Times-Union
“his insides just kind of dropped” when deputies arrested him at his home on
suspicion of sexual battery in August.
The mix-up wasn’t cleared up
until October, after Williams called his mother to say he believed police were
looking for the other Cody Williams, a classmate at Clay High School.