‘I believed he was on his way to murder people’: Police actions before seeking warrants focus of Garner motions hearing

(Update: Adding video)

BEND, Ore. (KTVZ) – A five-day pre-trial motions hearing began Tuesday for a Portland man accused of plotting a mass-shooting attack last October at a Smith Rock State Park climbing event. Samson Garner’s defense attorney sought to exclude evidence he claims was illegally obtained, as prosecutors began laying out their defense of the process.

 Samson Zebturiah Garner, 40, was brought in and seated by defense lawyers in the courtroom for the hearing, which was delayed about an hour after defense attorney Joel Wirtz objected to Garner appearing in court wearing the “highly visible” hand and leg restraints that had been placed on him Tuesday morning.

Deschutes County Circuit Judge Allison Emerson reviewed a report of restraint factors from the jail and noted that he was in civilian clothes, but Wirtz said the added restraints “taint my clients’ right to a fair, impartial jury.”

Emerson said it appears there have been no behavioral issues involving Garner and ordered that he wear leg braces only, as he’d worn previously in court. So Garner was taken back to jail for those changes.

Wirtz also disputed the presence of Deschutes County sheriff’s Detective Benjamin Geist in the courtroom to assist prosecutors during the pre-trial proceedings, as he is one of the witnesses to be called. Emerson agreed to exclude all other witnesses from the courtroom and directed them not to discuss their testimony with others.

But she allowed Geist to be present and serve in the role sought by prosecutors, noting. “The issues in this case are complex. There are many players involved.”

Garner faces more than two-dozen charges, including first-degree attempted murder with multiple victims, attempted assault and unlawful use of a weapon. His seven-day jury trial is currently set to begin in late October. The judge in June rejected defense attorney motions to dismiss the charges or remove the district attorney's office from the trial.

As the hearing began, Wirtz again claimed the affidavits for the search warrants were “inaccurate and untruthful.” But the judge denied that motion to controvert, saying she’d reviewed the motions and warrants and found that the defense did not meet the burden to show they were untruthful.

The defense attorney drew up a timeline on an easel in his effort to prove the searches and actions conducted without a prior warrant were illegal. He claimed Portland police had more than enough time and there was “no reason they should not have done a warrant,” noting that Garner had been under 24-hour surveillance, including a night-vision video camera.

“Our position, based on both the federal Constitution and relatively recent state case law, is this is beyond the scope of what is allowed without a warrant,” Wirtz said, as he seeks to have a large amount of material excluded from trial.

Chief Deputy District Attorney Mary Anderson said the state will show there was probable cause and “exigent” (emergency) circumstances and “life-saving issues” for the law enforcement actions, including pinging Garner’s cellphone without first going to court for a warrant, as he’d left his home and had threatened the Smith Rock shooting in emails to friends.

The first prosecution witness was Deschutes County sheriff’s Detective Clint Baltzor, who Anderson led through his extensive background, including training for SWAT teams and sniper teams, as well as knowledge regarding ballistic vests and in quickly securing warrants and cellphone pings when needed.

Baltzor noted, for example, that cellphone pings can often not provide precise locations, “so just having a ping doesn’t mean you quickly locate somebody. Sometimes it takes a while.” He said law enforcement had to act based on the knowledge of Garner’s comments, starting with initial information he'd received of an “individual who had threatened to shoot up Smith Rock State Park” at the annual “Craggin’ Classic” event.

Garner leaving his home after weeks spent at home and avoiding contact with others meant it “turned from a possible, potential threat to an active threat,” Baltzor said, based on information from several sources.

He said a friend, for example, received a text message that included “some statements about how the non-believers’ blood will flow,” as well as suicidal thoughts, how “he wanted to go up to the mountains and blow his head off with a shotgun before he could hurt anybody else.”

“When he left home and we know he had been gone long enough for drive time here,” Baltzor said, they needed to “as quickly as possible implement a plan to locate and detain him.”

When they learned he had been gone from his home over 10 hours, the detective recalled thinking: “Uh oh, he’s got a really big head start.”

Sheriff’s Detective David Turkington spent much of the afternoon testifying about his background, the same sequence of events, and the sped-up law enforcement actions when they learned on Oct. 19, the day before the Smith Rock event, that Garner had left his Portland home some 13 hours earlier.

“I believed he was on his way to murder people,” Turkington said. “That was a minimum I thought was going on. … I didn’t believe we had time for a search warrant, considering the head start he had … Now we had an imminent threat.”

He said a form filled out for a search warrant puts you in a queue.

“This guy could be in our county, carrying out right now or having carried out a mass casualty event. I don’t have time for that form.” So Turkington called a Verizon number for help in pinging Garner’s phone and got an immediate location, the fastest he could ever recall, for an area by the Cline Falls Highway, leading to him being located and arrested at a campsite near the Masten Trailhead.

Waiting, he said, was not an option.

"Even if we got a ping from atop Smith Rock, we'd almost have to have a rifle shot to pick him out. ... You'd almost have to wait until someone gets shot at or killed to find him, and that's not acceptable," Turkington said.

Turkington also said he believed, based on the information at hand and his experience and training, that Garner had met the three legs of the stool needed for probable cause: intent, means and opportunity to carry out what he'd talked about doing at Smith Rock.

The detective spoke of other disturbing emails and texts, such as a statement to a friend in which Garner said, "The only thing I regret is not cutting your head off in front of your wife," as pointing to "evil … That's not just violence."

Wirtz asked both detectives about how Garner when found at the campsite, 20 miles southwest of Smith Rock, was listening to music from his iPhone, sitting in his flip-flops and drinking a beer.

But Turkington told prosecutor Stacy Neil that didn't change his view about probable cause for an arrest on menacing, attempted assault, and even attempted homicide charges.

"No," the detective said. "Just because I interrupted him before he actually shoots somebody doesn't mean he wasn't going to go and shoot somebody."