The Full Text Grand Jury Hearing

EXAMINER: This is called 23 on the docket, Commonwealth vs. Rachel Ammon (sic) Leatherman. The witness is Deputy Eddie McGuire.

Madame Foreperson, would you please swear in our witness?

The witness, DEPUTY EDDIE McGUIRE, after first having been duly sworn, testified as follows:

Q. Sir, you are Deputy Eddie McGuire of the McCracken County Sheriff’s Department?

A. Yes, Sir.

Q. Deputy McGuire, what information do you have for this Grand Jury concerning Rachel Leatherman?

A. Rachel Leatherman?

On 6/28 of ’06, deputies responded to the area of Queensway Drive on a complaint of a dark blue Buick LeSabre occupied by a female subject with blond hair who had come up to the complainant’s home and asked about tar herion. Officers tried to locate the vehicle in the area and were unsuccessful.

As I was going back into town on Highway 60–Queensway is right off Highway 60. I located the vehicle right around the area of Highway 60 and Cairo Road. I stopped the vehicle, asked her to exit–asked her to exit the vehicle.

I immediately noticed she had some–had very glassy eyes, very unsteady on her feet, noticed she had her pants unbuttoned and unzipped, just acting very erratically. I asked her why she had her pants unzipped. She just said that it was more comfortable that way.

The first thing she said, she said she hadn’t had anything to drink tonight, and she had some prior surgeries on her back and ankles, so she couldn’t perform any balancing test.

I asked her about the alleged incident on Queensway Drive. She denied talking to anybody at first. Then she stated she went up to one of the gentleman’s house and asked him to buy some birds from her. I asked the gentleman- or I asked her why the gentleman would call and lie about the incident and she referred to him as a snitch.

I asked her about if she was on any kind of prescription medications that would cause her to be acting the way she was. She asked–she said she was on Adderall, Metoprolol and Clonazepam. Clonazepam is an antidepressant. It’s one of the medications that you’re not supposed to drive on when you’re–when you’re under the influence of it.

I asked for consent to search the vehicle. Myself and Deputy Walters located all these–all the prescription medications inside the vehicle, along with a cup of beer that was half full and a half empty bottle of wine in the passenger floorboard. She was arrested for DUI and transported to Lourdes for blood.

Sometime between the time that I put her in the back of my car at Highway 60 and the time we got to Lourdes, she placed a small baggy of a suspected controlled substance, probably crack cocaine, in the back seat where the seat belt comes up in my back seat. She also accidently (sic) dropped her watch right on top of the–right on top of the baggy of crack. Of course, she’s cuffed behind the back, and she’s trying to work it–work it down into seat, and she dropped her watch with it.

She denied putting the controlled substance there. She said hundreds of people come through my back seat.

Two days prior to this, I personally inspected the back seat. In the back of a police car, the seats come out automa– you can pull the back seat–the cusion where you usually sit in, you can pull it out, vacuum underneath the seats, everything like that. Two days before that, I vacuumed it, inspected it–routine maintenance every weekend.

And she was the first person to be in my back seat that I’d arrested since the time it was vacuumed and inspected.

Q. We don’t have the blood results back?

A. I don’t believe so. Blood or lab, yeah.

Q. Did she admit to drinking at all?

A. No, I don’t believe she did. You can smell alcoholic beverages on a person.

Q. So you could smell it on her?

A. Yes, sir.

Q. Did you observe her driving?

A. I drove past her. She was driving very slowly when I first came in contact with her. And like I said, we had already ceared the call, so to speak, so I was going back into town is when I located her. And I was driving past her, and I noticed she had her signal on the whole time I was coming by her.

And then, of course, I noticed that that was the vehicle that we were just looking for when I noticed the Washington plates.

Q. Did you do any field sobriety tests?

A. Horizontal gaze nystagmus. Yes, sir, she showed all six clues.

Q. Okay. Which means she failed the field sobriety? Lack of smooth pursuit.

An HGN is when you check the eyes. When you–when a normal person follows your finger, their eyes are going to be very smooth in following your fingers. Nystagmus is the–is called an involuntary jerking of the eyes. It’s where when she’s following my fingers, her eyes were doing this like that.

And it’s the same principle as if you were to spin around in a circle ten times and then check someone’s eyes. The room’s spinning. That’s the same–that’s the same way that we use to detect the presence of any kind of controlled substance, alcoholic beverages in a DUI arrest.

And she showed–she failed that. She showed all six clues of that.

Q. And why–why do you believe that the substance she placed in the seat was cocaine?

A. Since the–since the original complaint was for heroin, we went ahead and done a field test for heroin. We thought it was crack all along. And it–it did field test negative for heroin, so it’s going to be crack cocaine.

Q. And that’s been sent to the lab, has it not?

A. Yes, sir.

EXAMINER: Okay. Are there any questions for Deputy McGuire?

GRAND JUROR: How can you pass it on to–I mean, you know, I’m all for you-all and on your side and everything.

THE WITNESS: Sure.

GRAND JUROR: If it goes to court and if it does go to trial and the test hasn’t come back yet–

EXAMINER: Oh, it won’t go to trial without the test having come back.

GRAND JUROR: Well, I don’t see how it can go to the Grand Jury without the test coming back unless you’ve got records showing that, you know, you hadn’t had anybody in the car in the last two days. Like I said–

THE WINTESS: Right. That’s easily obtainable through dispatch records. They’ll know when–whenever I take someone into custody, they automatically know when that happens. And she was the first one to be in my back seat.

Plus, every time somebody gets out of my back seat, I go in there and–it’s just routine maintenance. You just—you just can’t let anybody do that.

Q. Have you seen crack cocaine before–

A. Yes, sir.

Q.–Deputy McGuire?

Okay. Did this substance look like the substance you’ve seen when you saw crack?

A. Yes, sir.

EXAMINER: Any questions–other questions of Deputy McGuire?

(no response)

Dear Paducah Kentucky McCracken County Grand Jury: There was no weight, or field test, or confirmatory lab test for the “gonna be crack” when Mr. McGuire spun his tale for you. He neglected to tell you that I passed four roadside PBTs. But here, you might find this test most interesting, because he hid this test from you and lied about it. He had this exculpatory test in his hand, and yet he led you to believe that I was stumbling drunk.:

I am not even going to comment any more. I am simply going to post every word that McGuire said in any hearing that he testified in, and he will speak for himself.

Oh. Here’s the drug test: