SHERMAN — The former state district judge for Wood County testified Monday that he ordered the 2017 arrest of Quitman’s police captain not as an act of retribution but because the officer lied in a sworn affidavit alleging a cozy relationship between the judge, the sheriff and the district attorney in the East Texas county.
“He made a false statement of fact during a criminal proceeding,” former judge Jeff Fletcher said, explaining his decision to issue an arrest warrant for Terry Bevill, a 19-year law enforcement veteran with a previously pristine record.
Fletcher, testifying on the sixth day of Bevill’s wrongful termination suit before a jury in the court of U.S. District Judge Amos L. Mazzant, repeatedly denied the central thesis of Bevill’s complaint: that Quitman’s then-mayor, David Dobbs, was pressured to can Bevill by what one of Bevill’s lawyers called a “trilogy of power” in the largely rural county: Judge Fletcher, Sheriff Tom Castloo and District Attorney Jim Wheeler.
Fletcher’s personal, handwritten journal from the summer of 2017, admitted into evidence in the civil trial, called Bevill’s assertion “completely baseless and a total pile of crap.”
After Bevill was fired, Fletcher issued a bench warrant ordering Bevill’s arrest on a charge of aggravated perjury, a felony. The criminal case went away when a Wood County grand jury no-billed Bevill, some 16 months after his arrest. By then, the former police captain contends, his career in law enforcement was in tatters.
Last week, two of Fetcher’s three individual co-defendants in the civil suit, Dobbs and Wheeler, testified that there was no conspiracy to fire Bevill, a decision Dobbs said was his and his alone after consultation with attorneys for Quitman.
The fourth defendant, Castloo, is expected to take the stand Tuesday, after which Bevill’s lawyers plan to rest. The case is likely to go to the jury by Wednesday, Judge Mazzant said at the conclusion of Monday’s court session.
Bevill’s troubles began on June 2, 2017, when he signed an affidavit that was attached to a motion for a change of venue filed in behalf of a friend, David McGee, the Wood County jail administrator at the time, who was facing trial before Fletcher on charges that he tampered with a government record to facilitate the escape of a county jail inmate — a woman with whom, according to court records, McGee had had a sexual relationship.
Bevill’s affidavit, requested by McGee and drafted by his criminal defense attorney, identified Bevill as Quitman’s police captain — the No. 2 administrator in the police department. The affidavit said in part, “It is not possible for David McGee to obtain a fair and impartial trial in Wood County, Texas, because there is a dangerous combination against Defendant instigated by influential persons” — Fletcher, Castloo, and Wheeler.
McGee’s motion for change of venue was denied by Fletcher. The jailer was convicted by a jury in a two-day trial and sentenced to two years in prison. The day the trial ended, Fletcher ordered Bevill’s arrest.
“I was upset about it,” Fletcher said of Bevill’s affidavit. “I wasn’t angry. … It was a lie.”
Dobbs, the former mayor, and Greg Hollen, now retired as Quitman’s city secretary, both testified that Bevill was fired because he violated city policies by lending his name and position to a criminal matter in which Quitman was not involved.
Bevill’s lawsuit seeks unspecified compensatory and punitive damages. He is represented by Sean McCaffity, Laura Benitez Geisler, Jody Leigh Rodenberg and Rebecca Neumann, all with Sommerman, McCaffity, Quesada & Geisler in Dallas.
Dobbs and the city of Quitman are represented by Lance Vincent of Ritcheson, Laufer & Vincent in Tyler.
Castloo and Wood County are represented by Robert Scott Davis of Flowers Davis in Tyler.
Wheeler is represented by Grant Blaies and James Hryekewicz of Blaies & Hightower in Fort Worth.
Fletcher is represented by Brianna Michelle Krominga and Will Wassdorf of the Texas attorney general’s office.
Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated the employer of Brianna Michelle Krominga. She is an assistant Texas attorney general.