Prosecutors are seeking private medical records from the hours after police arrested John D. Williams for the killing of Somerset County sheriff’s Deputy Cpl. Eugene Cole.
Last week, an assistant attorney general prosecuting the murder case asked a judge to subpoena records from the ambulance service that treated Williams after a three-day manhunt ended with his capture in late April.
In an affidavit, police have said that Williams admitted soon after his arrest to having shot Cole in Norridgewock. But Williams pleaded not guilty in June, and lawyers for the 29-year-old Madison native are trying to keep the apparent confession from becoming trial evidence, arguing, in essence, that police beat it out of him.
[John D. Williams pleads not guilty to murder of sheriff’s deputy]
The request to subpoena “run sheets and reports” from Delta Ambulance staff’s treatment of Williams at the Waterville Police Station is prosecutors first public response to Williams’ lawyers’ motion to suppress.
But the document offers little insight into how the attorney general’s office will address the claim of police brutality in the case of the first Maine law enforcement officer shot dead in the line of duty in nearly three decades.
The court motion provides no direct response to this claim but does note that there are video and audio recordings of Williams receiving medical care in the police station.
[Police ‘beat and pummeled’ suspect before alleged confession to killing deputy, attorney claims]
Defense attorney Verne Paradie contends that police “beat and pummeled” Williams upon his arrest despite him offering “zero resistance” — contrasting official accounts in which police said he was injured while putting up “limited resistance.” A mugshot taken after Williams arrest shows heavy bruising around his left eye.
Paradise argues that the alleged beating, police’s later “coercive tactics” and the effects of drug withdrawal make Williams’ statements upon arrest inadmissible as evidence. Justice Robert Mullen will hold a hearing on the matter in February.
Williams is being held without bail at the Maine State Prison. He is scheduled for trial in a Portland court in June.
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