Podcast Episode: Police Try the Old Switch-a-Roo With Excessive Force Photos

Pip: There's a certain audacity to submitting a photograph as evidence of someone's condition after an arrest — and then having that photograph turn out to be from three months earlier. Bold strategy.

Mara: This episode covers a case from LauraLynnHammett's reporting at A Higher Law — an excessive force lawsuit where the key evidence turned out to be the wrong photograph entirely. Let's start with what the documents actually show.

Police Try the Old Switch-a-Roo With Excessive Force Photos

Pip: The central tension here is a simple one: two booking photographs, two completely different stories, and a court trying to figure out which one reflects what actually happened the night of Jacob Earls' arrest on August 11, 2009.

Mara: The setup matters. Earls, representing himself, produced Exhibit 1 — a jail document showing him beaten and unconscious. He explained how he found it, and the court quoted him directly: "I found it in my — the day I was leaving to go to Brickeys, Arkansas, to start my six-month PD, I found it in the trash bag in my clothes and it was in my personal property. They have plastic Ziplock bags that they seal when they — like your wallet, your watch. The picture was in there, folded in half. I took it and I slipped it in my pocket because I knew it was crucial. It was crucial evidence. I knew that."

Pip: He found his own evidence in a Ziploc bag in a trash bag in his clothes. And he was right — it was crucial.

Mara: Exhibit 2, by contrast, showed Earls without a scratch, wearing what the court describes as a very colorful button-down dress shirt. Officer Ring and his witnesses insisted that was the August 11 booking photo. A detainee named William Shaw directly contradicted them, testifying that when Earls arrived at the detention center that night, he "was totally out" — and that staff were laughing while holding his head up for the picture.

Pip: Officer Ring's own account of that evening has a very relaxed quality — chatting about parents and grandmothers, wishing Earls good luck on the way out. A courteous arrest, by all accounts.

Mara: The court wasn't satisfied with the record and ordered defense counsel to produce a full accounting of all photographs. What came back was an affidavit from Brian Agee, a software developer at the company running the detention center's system. Agee confirmed that the colorful-shirt photo — Exhibit 2, the one Ring's entire defense rested on — was taken May 18, 2009. Nearly three months before the arrest.

Pip: So the photograph offered to prove Earls had no injuries after the August arrest was taken in May.

Mara: And Exhibit 1, the one showing Earls beaten and unconscious, was confirmed to come from a document created August 11, 2009, at 2:12 a.m. The court called Ring's reliance on Exhibit 2 "wholly rejected" and denied summary judgment, finding that real questions of fact remained about whether excessive force was used.

Pip: The system usually makes it hard to prove what happened. Earls found his proof in a Ziploc bag in a trash bag — and it held up.

Mara: That's the through-line here: accountability is difficult, documentation matters, and sometimes the evidence survives anyway.

Pip: When the photograph you submitted as proof of innocence predates the arrest by three months, the court tends to notice.

Mara: The deeper question is what happens in cases where the documentation doesn't survive — or was never found in a pocket. That's the territory worth watching.