LINCOLNTON, N.C. -- All charges have been dropped against the Lincoln County sheriff because of some flaws with the evidence against him.
Sheriff Tim Daugherty, who was accused of obstruction of justice, will not go to trial.
Much of the state's case rested on a statement signed by the sheriff, in which the district attorney says the sheriff admits to ordering his chief deputy, Barry Taylor, to improperly and illegally release a DWI suspect. But upon closer inspection, the district attorney says the document may not be as legit as they once thought.
"It may not have been created by him. We don't know," said District Attorney Gwynn Radeker.
Daugherty was accused of lying to state investigators. On Monday, the sheriff admitted his memory is "kind of fuzzy and it's just a blur."
He originally told agents that he was not involved in the illegal release of a DWI suspect until days after it happened. But the statement, apparently signed by the sheriff, shows he spoke with Taylor the night of the offense and actually ordered the suspect to be released.
Daugherty's lawyer, Sean Devereaux, said the signed statement is "not consistent with anything else in the case. The dates are wrong. The days are wrong. The facts are wrong."
So Devereux had the original statement tested by experts.
"It's not an original," he said. "It does not have an ink signature on it, and there is significant question as to where that document came from."
Because the document is not an original and phone records showed no evidence of the late-night conversation that prosecutors built their case on, the district attorney had little choice but to drop all charges against the sheriff.
The district attorney says he is not going to give up searching for those answers and he is not ruling out that more charges could be filed in the future.
While Daugherty, for the moment, is out of harm's way, his chief deputy wasn't so lucky. Last October, Barry Taylor was convicted of misdemeanor obstruction of justice for releasing the DWI suspect. Taylor has since been fired from the Lincoln County Sheriff's Department.
