The Dinwiddie County sheriff is defending what he describes as an interrogation technique in which he used a racial slur while trying to obtain a confession from a murder suspect.
A video of an interrogation obtained Tuesday by the Richmond Times-Dispatch shows Sheriff D.T. “Duck” Adams used the N-word twice when talking to Michael Edward Elmore.
Elmore was later charged and convicted of killing Carter Bascon Northington, 70, better known in the community as the “can man” for his long hikes to gather aluminum cans to recycle for money.
Adams said in a phone interview Tuesday that he used the slur just once in an interrogation behind closed doors, while trying to get Elmore to confess.
“(Elmore) said it first, and then I repeated what he said because any police officer knows that when you’re in an interrogation, you have to use their words in order to get on their level to get a confession,” Adams said.
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“I used his words. That wasn’t my words. I had him at a certain point, and I didn’t want to break that thought,” Adams said.
Adams, a Democrat who is up for re-election next month against three independents, blames the recent circulation of the video on a political ploy by Republicans to oust him.
Dean McCray, chairman of the Dinwiddie Republican Committee, denied Adams’ accusation.
“There is no truth to that. The Republican Committee did not circulate that. We think he’s going to lose anyway,” McCray said. “I’m ashamed of the sheriff. There is no place for this type of talk. I understand he was doing an interrogation, but you have to draw the line. This makes our county look bad.”
Adams said the accusation against him was “the most ridiculous thing.
“It is the dirtiest politics somebody can play on anybody that is running for public office. I was in an interrogation, and they want to take the words he used that I repeated and try to make something out of that,” he said.
The video clip, recorded four days after Northington was found with his skull fractured at a vacant house on Sept. 2, 2013, shows Elmore shortly after his arrest in an interrogation room at the Dinwiddie Sheriff’s Office.
Speaking quietly but visibly nervous, Elmore does not confess to the crime but says he saw a group of black men attack Northington. When Adams presses him for more, Elmore raises his voice, saying that this would get him “in a bunch of more (expletive) with these n-s.”
Adams tries to calm him.
“No, it’s not,” he tells Elmore in the video. “We’re gonna protect you, man. We’re gonna protect you. These n-s are not going to get to you. … You’re not gonna be in no hot water with those n-s. Tell me what happened, man.”
Adams said he has not and never would use the slur in any other scenario, public or private, and that his interrogation resulted in Elmore’s conviction.
“I was able to get a confession, and the man is in the penitentiary now as a result of it. What more can I say about it? I just can’t believe they would resort to this,” he said.
But Dinwiddie County Commonwealth’s Attorney Ann Cabell Baskervill said the lead investigator in the case, not Adams, got Elmore to confess and that the sheriff was not present for most of the interrogation.
“During the short time of the interview when Elmore was speaking to the sheriff during this part of the interview, Elmore was trying to escape all responsibility by blaming his own violence on nameless, faceless assailants as he described,” Baskervill said. “He only made relevant and helpful concessions after the sheriff left the interview room.”
In an interview at her Dinwiddie Courthouse office Tuesday, Baskervill, running for her first full term as an independent, said she was “shocked” when she first saw the video during the preliminary stages of the investigation and later at trial.
“That is a word that is shockingly offensive. I was shaking, I was so upset. To hear it in an investigative context from the head of a law-enforcement agency is even worse, scary worse,” she said.
The suspect’s concessions were made “thanks to good, professional interrogation and investigation” and were made “more powerful” when the defendant testified in his own defense and made his own case much worse, Baskervill said.
“The fact that a murderer is now, appropriately, in the penitentiary should not in any way be attributed to the vulgarity used in (the sheriff’s) interview. Absolutely no good came from the vulgarity; it is nothing but unacceptable under any circumstances, and certainly under circumstances of law enforcement and criminal justice. Use of the N-word is the antithesis of justice,” she said.
Baskervill said Adams should apologize publicly for using the slur.
Adams has served since 2012. On Nov. 3, he faces three challengers: Millard B. Harman, Darryl E. Hayes and Ryan L. Porter, who are running as independents. The GOP committee has endorsed Porter, said McCray, the organization’s chairman.
J. Barrett Chappell Jr., chairman of the Dinwiddie Democratic Committee, said it could not comment on “interrogation practices” but that it opposed “disrespectful terms.”
“We cannot say whether or not his interrogation practices are acceptable, being that we are not law-enforcement professionals. We leave that determination to a body of his peers, like sheriffs or police chiefs,” he said. The party, he added, does not “discriminate or use any disrespectful terms against any ethnic group.”