Attorneys argue police botched investigation
Murphy – Six people occupied a notorious drug house in Andrews on the evening Cody Austin White nearly died.
Methamphetamine, narcotic pain pills and liquor were on the menu this particular Sunday, but before the clock struck midnight, the fun turned into horror.
After the chaos settled and law enforcement secured the scene, Jackie Slaughter stood as the lone suspect. Police booked him in the Cherokee County Detention Center, taking his clothes and personal belongings, which were never tested for blood because none was visible by a naked eye.
Meanwhile, authorities collected written statements from two of the people in the trailer at the time of the assault and videotaped interviews with two others. One of the witnesses was covered from head to toe with a red substance that appeared to be blood. However, no official will ever testify as to whether it was actually blood because police never collected swab tests from her either.
Police seized one knife from the crime scene that tested positive for the victim’s blood. However, investigators overlooked two additional knives that are visible in crime scene photos.
The lone knife seized at the scene that night was found cutting edge up. However, it only had a few thin lines of blood on the side of the blade nearest the dull edge and a couple small specs of blood in other locations. No blood appears to be on its cutting edge, and the knife was found wedged between several other items on a coffee table that was positioned near the center of the living room.
The two overlooked knives were photographed on a living room end table positioned between White and the person who defense attorneys believe is the real culprit – the victim’s aunt, Daratha Curtis.
“That night, law enforcement showed up to that trailer and they chose their perpetrator,” defense attorney Holly Christy told jurors.
Around 10 p.m. May 7, 2017, police were dispatched to investigate a stabbing at a known drug house on West Memorial Drive in Andrews. White suffered a large laceration that stretched from the right corner of his mouth, down the side of his face and around to the back of his neck.
A paramedic who testified at trial last week said it was one of the worst calls she’s ever been sent to. She said White lost a significant amount of blood to the point where he lacked a pulse and stopped breathing for a short period of time.
The 11-inch laceration included damage to White’s internal and external jugular veins, and he was flown to Erlanger Health System in Chattanooga, Tenn., where a doctor surgically repaired the gash. Authorities found White and Curtis at an adjacent trailer, where she had spoken to a dispatcher while White bled on the porch waiting for medics.
Meanwhile, Slaughter and three other people remained inside Curtis’ trailer where the incident happened until law enforcement arrived. Deputies found Slaughter sitting on a loveseat adjacent to the trailer’s front door and immediately detained him based on the call with Curtis, who claimed that “he slit my nephew’s throat.”
Curtis told dispatchers there was no communication nor altercation between White and Slaughter before the assault. However, she testified in court that Slaughter was acting strangely and concealed something with a black handle behind his back moments prior to the incident.
Curtis told jurors she “sometimes” sold drugs to pay bills and that she had given Slaughter and White methamphetamine on the night of the assault. She said she knew how Slaughter acted when he used drugs.
Curtis testified that she asked Slaughter if he intended to hurt them and pleaded that “we’re your friends.” She said Slaughter responded, “You’re weirding me out,” so she suggested they sit down to talk about it.
The victim testified that over the course of the day he had drunk alcohol, used methadone and snorted methamphetamine. He said he visited his aunt’s trailer on that evening to give her a bottle of liquor and spent a short time in a bedroom with Curtis talking about his plans to attend a party.
White said he was later sitting on a loveseat in the living room talking with Curtis, who was sitting in a separate chair facing him, when Slaughter pulled back his head and slit his throat from behind. White said he looked back and saw Slaughter holding a knife. He claims Slaughter then said, “Yeah, I got you, didn’t I?”
However, during cross examination, the defense argued that White’s testimony was different from what he initially told police and that his story had changed several times since the incident happened. The defense also pointed out inaccuracies in White’s initial statements to jurors.
During closing arguments, defense attorney Rich Cassady argued that the physical evidence did not support the narrative offered by White. He said the location of the bloodstain on the floor only would have been possible if the culprit had stood up from where Curtis was sitting and cut White’s throat.
“What’s more credible – the physical evidence, which has no dog in this fight, or the testimony of a drug user and a drug dealer?” Cassady asked.
With no other motive offered during testimony, the prosecutors’ case implies that Slaughter cut White because he was high. White has known Slaughter his “entire life.” He told an investigator that Slaughter has “always been nice” to him and that they got along well.
“Motive is an interesting thing. In some cases, there’s proof of it, and sometimes there’s not,” assistant district attorney Jim Moore told jurors. “You do not need a motive to convict.”
However, the defense implied that Slaughter had stopped using drugs. One witness from the house testified that Slaughter refused to take methamphetamine from Curtis the day before the incident.
“I seriously question [White’s] credibility,” Cassady said. “There’s been no proof in this case that Jackie Slaughter had any motive whatsoever to harm Cody White.”
Meanwhile, defense attorneys laid a case for why Curtis could have been the person who sliced White’s throat. Police took photographs of Curtis that show her covered from the hat she was wearing down to her toes in what appears to be blood. Additionally, more blood appears to be on Curtis’ right side than her left.
A photo of Curtis’ right hand shows a significant amount of red substance, while her left hand appears relatively clean. Moreover, the picture shows a thin, light-red section on her right palm that the defense believes resembles the handle of a knife.
“Daratha Curtis stands up, and with her right hand, cuts Cody White,” Cassady argued.
Cherokee County sheriff’s Lt. Tiffany Holland, the lead investigator in the case, agreed that Curtis had more red on her right side than her left and acknowledged the presence of an outline in the middle of her right palm. However, Holland said the outline could’ve been made by “a lot of things.”
Holland testified that she was not surprised Curtis was covered in red because it seemed that blood spewed on “anybody who was in close proximity” to White while he was bleeding. The defense argued Holland’s own words proved that Slaughter was not in close proximity to White at the time of the incident.
“Mr. Curtis blames Mr. Slaughter, and that’s enough for [law enforcement],” Cassady said. “The builders of this case did not use best practices or common sense.”
Police didn’t document blood on the clothes of anyone in the house that night, not even Curtis because they never tested the red substance that covered her from head to toe. Police also failed to collect fingerprints and DNA samples from anyone else besides Slaughter and White, which would have allowed authorities to exclude the other occupants as suspects.
Nor did police drug test anyone to see who may have been high. However, Curtis and White admitted in court they used drugs on the night of the incident.
No one besides White has said they witnessed the assault. Curtis and another woman that was in the house both said they looked away for a moment and didn’t actually see Slaughter cut White’s throat. The other two people in the house said they were asleep when the assault happened.
Moreover, Slaughter’s DNA and fingerprints were not found on the knife prosecutors allege he used to cut White.
“There’s a complete lack of any physical evidence tying Jackie to this crime,” Christy said. “Jackie Slaughter had no blood on his hands, his clothes, nor his body that night. Not a single spec.”
Regarding a motive as to why Curtis would cut her own nephew’s throat, the defense argued that she was angry at him for stealing his dying mother’s methadone pills when she was battling throat cancer.
Curtis, who was twice convicted of assault with a deadly weapon in Macon County, admitted that she was angry over the stolen pills but denied trying to kill White.
Adding further intrigue to the case, more than three years after the incident, Curtis gave Holland a second knife that was found by her lover while cutting the neighbor’s grass.
“It dawned on me that it could be the knife [used to cut White’s throat],” Curtis told jurors regarding why she turned over the knife to law enforcement.
According to testimony and video shown in court, the only people from inside the house who walked onto the neighbor’s property that night was White and Curtis.
“What if she used that time to take the knife and throw it over the privacy fence?” Cassady asked. “How else does that knife get there.”
Prosecutors said they believe the knife used to cut White is the one police seized from the coffee table and called the defense team’s theory about Curtis “completely ridiculous.”
“There’s blood all over her hand and that’s because she was touching Cody’s body on the porch,” assistant district attorney Kimberly Harris said. “That whole time she was crouched down, she was checking on him. That’s how she got blood on her.”
The jury was still deliberating the case when the Cherokee Scout went to press Tuesday morning.