Johnson City files answer to Kat Dahl’s amended Sean Williams-related lawsuit
GREENEVILLE, Tenn. (WJHL) — Johnson City has filed its answer to former prosecutor Kateri “Kat” Dahl’s amended lawsuit against the City and its former police chief Karl Turner.
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The Monday filing makes similar defenses to those the city put forth in a recent motion to essentially dismiss the case.
At its essence, it claims Dahl was not an actual employee of the city and is therefore not eligible to make legal claims of retaliatory discharge.
Regardless, the city’s answer states, “Dahl’s job performance was substandard and it is now known that JCPD’s experience was similar to her job performance in the United States Attorney’s Office.”
The answer specifically points to a May 19, 2021 meeting Dahl had with Turner and Captain Kevin Peters to discuss concerns they and other officers had about the pace with which Dahl was bringing federal indictments to a grand jury.
In that meeting, the city’s answer claims, “Dahl decided that she would seek indictments for five specific cases during the June Grand Jury and Dahl agreed that she would then report the results directly back to Captain Peters. Dahl did neither of these things.”
Dahl sued Johnson City and Turner in June 2022, roughly a year after her contract was not renewed, essentially terminating her as a Special Assistant U.S. Attorney helping to prosecute federal cases in conjunction with the Johnson City Police Department (JCPD).
Dahl’s suit claims that dismissal came for “pretextual reasons” and that Johnson City’s alleged reasons for getting rid of her amounted to “petty criticism.” The suit claims those reasons mask her firing’s actual intent, which she claims was to retaliate because she pressed the police department to broaden its investigation against now-accused child rapist Sean Williams.
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The trial in the case, if it’s not settled or dismissed before then, is scheduled to begin May 14 in the U.S. Eastern District Court’s Knoxville courthouse.
Dahl was brought into the Williams case in November 2020, about a year into her tenure. JCPD had allegedly found several hundred rounds of ammunition while searching Williams’ safe in late September 2020 as it investigated a woman’s non-fatal fall from Williams’ fifth-story window on Sept. 19.
Police requested Dahl’s aid in getting a federal charge of “felon in possession of ammunition” against Williams.
By the time she recorded a Dec. 8, 2020 meeting with Turner and Peters, that meeting’s transcript makes clear she had grave concerns about Williams potentially being a serial rapist.
Transcript: Prosecutor pushed for Sean Williams search warrant 15 days before alleged child rape
The transcript reveals a lengthy discussion about Dahl’s concerns and her belief the JCPD should attempt to get a warrant to search computers and SIM cards it had seized in separate September searches of Williams’ premises and safe.
Dahl’s suit argues that JCPD didn’t take those concerns seriously enough. No search warrant for the computers was ever executed, but in May 2023 police in North Carolina who had arrested Williams on drug charges searched digital files he had in a vehicle that now form the basis of child rape charges against him.
The city, though, argues Williams could potentially have been stopped earlier if Dahl had simply followed the lead of two experienced law enforcement officers.
“Chief Turner and Captain Peters discussed with Dahl on December 8, 2020 an alternative course of seeking the Federal Court indictment of Williams, but acquiesced in Dahl’s interest in building a larger case against Williams,” the answer states.
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“These Defendants do not blame Dahl for her aspirations to build a larger case against Williams, but aver that things may have turned out differently had Dahl followed the suggestion of experienced law enforcement officers to charge Williams with the available criminal charge and ‘work the case backwards’, with victims more likely to come forward following his arrest.”
Williams came up during the May 19, 2021 discussion, which occurred two weeks after Johnson City police attempted without success to serve the felon in possession of ammunition warrant on him. Williams was not apprehended on that charge despite the search for him eventually widening to the U.S. Marshal’s Service. He was remanded to federal custody after Western Carolina University police arrested him April 29, 2023 on drug trafficking charges.
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