Tennessee man convicted of inmate van escape, as allegations of sex crimes await court action

GREENEVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — A jury on Friday found a Tennessee man guilty of escaping an inmate transport van but not guilty of trying to break out of jail, deciding the first of multiple trials that include criminal charges of raping children to create pornography and lawsuits accusing him of sexually assaulting dozens of women while police did little to investigate.

News outlets report that jurors delivered the split verdict against Sean Williams in a trial that began Tuesday in federal court in Greeneville. At trial, Williams reportedly said he was “not contesting” that he escaped from the van, but denied the claim he tried to break out of a jail cell months before that. His sentencing is scheduled for Nov. 18.

Williams represented himself after he and four defense attorneys parted ways, and his attempts to veer off topic drew frustrations from the judge, including when he tried to raise claims about corruption within the Johnson City Police Department. While he didn’t deny breaking out of the van, he said he was “contesting my lawful custody during that time,” according to news outlets.

Williams escaped from a van bringing him from Kentucky’s Laurel County Detention Center to federal court in Greeneville for a hearing last October. Authorities caught him in Florida more than a month after the escape.

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Williams was acquitted of a charge of trying to escape from the Washington County Detention Center in July 2023 by removing a section of his cell wall and concealing the work using toothpaste. He argued that removing the concrete that was between two cells wasn’t a “substantial step” toward escaping. During testimony, jail officials said they found writings by Williams about plans to escape.

The 52-year-old Williams next heads to federal trial on Aug. 27 on three counts of producing child sexual abuse material. He also faces Tennessee charges including child rape, aggravated sexual battery and especially aggravated sexual exploitation. And in a North Carolina federal court, he’s charged with possessing child sexual abuse images and illegal drugs.

The criminal cases are playing out while three federal lawsuits accuse the Johnson City Police Department of refusing to properly investigate evidence that Williams was drugging and raping women in their East Tennessee community for years. The lawsuits were filed by a former federal prosecutor, with one alleging that police were paid off to obstruct investigations into sexual assault allegations against Williams.

The allegations of corruption have been denied by the city as well as the officers named in the lawsuit.

Williams has not been charged to date with sexually assaulting the women, and in a message to The Tennessean, he said he was framed by law enforcement to cover up a broader public corruption scheme.

The former prosecutor’s lawsuit claims police deliberately botched her effort to arrest Williams on a federal felon-possessing-ammunition charge in April 2021, enabling him to flee. The city countered by saying she took five months to obtain an indictment when police requested one in 2020.

Williams wasn’t arrested until two years later, when a campus police officer at Western Carolina University found him asleep in his car and learned of the federal warrant.

An affidavit says a search of the car found — along with cocaine, methamphetamine and about $100,000 in cash — digital storage devices with more than 5,000 images of child sexual abuse as well as photos and videos of Williams sexually assaulting 52 women at his Johnson City apartment while they were in an “obvious state of unconsciousness.”

At least a half-dozen names on the folders of videos were consistent with first names on a list labeled “Raped” that Johnson City officers had found in his apartment two and a half years earlier, the affidavit says.

Amid public outcry, Johnson City in the summer of 2022 ordered an outside investigation into how officers handled sexual assault investigations. That November, the U.S. Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation opened a federal sex trafficking investigation.

Findings from the city’s outside investigation, released in 2023, include that police conducted inconsistent, ineffective and incomplete investigations; relied on inadequate record management; had insufficient training and policies, and sometimes showed gender-based stereotypes and bias. The city said it began improving the department’s performance while awaiting the findings, including following the district attorney’s new sexual assault investigation protocol and creating a “comfortable space” for victim interviews.