KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — UPDATE FRIDAY: A Knox County jury was unable Friday afternoon to reach a verdict in the case against a former East Tennessee police officer accused of grooming and raping a 13-year-old girl.
After about 10 hours of deliberation over two days, the panel told Knox County Criminal Court Judge Steve Sword they were hopelessly deadlocked on most of the 10-count indictment against Cassen Jackson-Garrison.
They did announce Friday -- as they'd hinted Thursday after about five hours of deliberations -- that they did all agree Jackson-Garrison was not guilty of the misdemeanor assault of the girl's father in September 2021.
Lawyers will reconvene Aug. 11 before Sword to review what happens next. Prosecutors can elect to try him again on the rape and battery charges.
Separately, Jackson-Garrison, 38, faces charges that include solicitation of and distribution of adult content to another underage female dating to 2021.
PREVIOUS STORY: Knox County jurors will resume deliberations Friday morning in the case of a former East Tennessee police officer accused of grooming and raping a 13-year-old girl he'd known for years.
Cassen Jackson-Garrison, 38, is accused of rape or abuse, in various ways in September 2021, in a 10-count indictment in Knox County Criminal Court. He's also accused of assaulting the girl's father.
His trial has gone on all week in Judge Steve Sword's court.
On Thursday morning, jurors heard closing arguments from prosecutors Ashley McDermott and Jordan Murray and defense attorney John Halstead before moving on to deliberations at lunchtime.
They worked about five hours before ending the day with a question and a decision.
They wanted to know what they should do if they'd reached a unanimous verdict on one count but hadn't been able to agree on others.
Sword advised them to keep working to try to reach a unanimous decision on all 10 counts, but if it became a fruitless task, then they were to return a verdict on whatever was unanimous and formally state they were hopelessly deadlocked on the others.
Moments after that, the panel signaled they wanted to go home for the night and start work again first thing Friday morning. Sword then dismissed them for the night.
Jackson-Garrison, of Knoxville, formerly was a Knoxville police officer -- briefly in the early 2010s as a probationary employee -- and an Oak Ridge police officer - briefly in the 2010s. His career came to an end in 2015 after he was accused of statutory rape of a 15-year-old girl in Anderson County who he'd encountered while on a call.
But Knox County jurors don't know that. The Anderson County case was ultimately resolved with a plea deal and the case has been expunged.
In the summer of 2021, Knox County prosecutors allege, Jackson-Garrison groomed the girl, becoming increasingly more aggressive as he sought to test how far she was willing to go with his advances.
By September 2021, the state alleges, he was ready to take her hand and put it on his penis for many minutes as they drove in his truck to an area country club with other children in the back seat.
In the ensuing days, he'd ask her to fellate him, pushing her head down, and he'd digitally penetrate her, among other things, the state alleges.
In one of their last encounters, the prosecution says, he gave her a gold condom. They didn't not have intercourse, according to the state.
Her family was becoming suspicious and when he was confronted at a gathering in September 2021, he punched the girl's father, charges allege.
By October, Jackson-Garrison was facing a police investigation, suspected of rape.
He took advantage of his position as an authority figure, McDermott told jurors.
"(The alleged victim) doesn't have any reason to just make up the story," she said.
But that's exactly what Halstead said was happening.
The child was coached, he argued, after first insisting to authorities that Jackson- Garrison had done nothing to her at all.
"Her story doesn't make sense in many ways," Halstead said.
He sought to poke holes in the state's case, noting the interior of Jackson-Garrison's truck, where some of the assaults allegedly occurred, wasn't swabbed for DNA. If his client really sexually abused her as she said, there'd have been genetic evidence in the truck, he said.
And while some of what he's accused of supposedly occurred when children or adults were near, no one actually saw anything, he argued.
