A 24-year-old who Jacksonville Sheriff’s officers beat after he fled during a traffic stop avoided jail time by pleading guilty to a non-violent misdemeanor Monday morning.
This is a significant change from the original claims made by the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office, which had arrested Le’keian Woods on six felony charges after officers pummeled him so badly that Woods suffered a head injury and a ruptured kidney. Woods’ face was so puffy and bloody in his mugshot that it required a content warning when displayed by local TV news stations.
Woods was originally charged with armed trafficking in amphetamine and cocaine, armed possession of a controlled substance, tampering with evidence and resisting an officer with violence – charges that State Attorney Melissa Nelson dropped.
Soon after his arrest, Nelson amended the resisting charge to resisting without violence, which is what he pleaded guilty to. Woods will not face any additional jail time.
Nicole Jamieson, Woods’ defense attorney, said Woods faced the misdemeanor charge for running from police and not obeying Detective Hunter Sullivan’s command to stop out of the vehicle and identify himself.
“Technically speaking, that charge would have been difficult to defeat, because he did, in fact, run rather than step out,” she said, adding that the state had a burden to prove that the stop in itself was lawful in the first place. Woods’ plea does not concede that he was actually guilty but that he felt a guilty plea was in his best interest.
State Attorney’s Office Communications Director David Chapman said the plea was “an appropriate resolution based on the facts of the case and the circumstances giving rise to Officer Garriga’s recent indictment.”
JSO gang unit officer Josue Garriga, who was the only officer who claimed he saw Woods involved in a drug deal, was himself arrested on state and federal charges related to an alleged sex crime against a 17-year-old girl he met in church.
Garriga and three other JSO officers arrested Woods on Sept. 29 after a police report said Garriga saw Woods involved in a drug deal at a gas station. Officers followed the car Woods was a passenger in and when they pulled him over, body camera footage shows that Woods took off running.
Jamieson said only Garriga saw the alleged drug deal and that, despite having access to his body camera and cell phone, he did not record what he saw.
When officers caught up with Woods, they jolted him twice with a Taser and punched and kneed him at least 17 times before cuffing him.
The arrest prompted Woods’ civil attorney Harry Daniels to send a letter to the U.S. Department of Justice on Oct 5 asking them to investigate the arrest, saying that Woods was “one of several unarmed people of color who has been brutally beaten after encountering members of JSO.”
The DOJ Civil Rights Division, criminal section, reviewed the arrest and found that the officers’ actions did “not give rise to a prosecutable violation of the federal civil rights laws.”
The plea “in no way excuses the behavior of JSO or condones their extreme use of force against Le’keian,” Jamieson said.
Garriga – one of the officers involved in Woods’ brutal arrest – has found himself at the center of controversy repeatedly. Most recently, Garriga was charged in federal court for coercion and enticement of a 17-year-old girl. The federal complaint detailed the accusations against Garriga, including that he forced himself on the teenager, sent unsolicited nude photographs and refused to let her leave his car until she performed a sexual act.
Before that, in 2015, he was one of several Putnam County detectives who fired at and killed Andrew Williams, 48.
Later, after joining the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office, Garriga killed a Black FAMU student during a traffic stop. The State Attorney’s Office cleared the shooting as reasonable, but Jamee Johnson’s family settled a lawsuit for $200,000 over the death last year.
Sheriff T.K. Waters criticized that settlement and successfully pushed for new city legislation that requires the city to receive approval from him and other constitutional officers before settling claims against their employees.
Waters said settling the claim against Garriga — instead of defending him at trial — had negatively affected JSO’s reputation.
Garriga, who was a member of the gang unit and identifies as Black and Hispanic, was also part of a group chat called “P—y A– Crackers” where he and others had stereotyped Black people and made one Black officer so uncomfortable he sought counseling from his pastor, according to an internal JSO investigation. Stories by First Coast News and News4Jax sparked that investigation.
Nichole Manna is The Tributary’s criminal justice reporter. You can reach her at nichole.manna@jaxtrib.org or on Twitter at @NicholeManna.