By MELINDA J. OVERSTREET
for Glasgow News 1
A Monroe County jury of four men and two women decided Friday that a former Glasgow Police Department chief was not guilty of the misdemeanor criminal charge of harassment with physical contact but no injury he had been facing since 2023.
The trial in Monroe District Court came almost a year after Guy J. Turcotte’s attorney, Matt Baker, had requested that a date be set for the proceeding, which was later originally scheduled for April and then rescheduled at least three times for a variety of reasons ranging from a conflict with a necessary in-service judicial training to the prosecutor’s having a case of COVID.
The case had been assigned a special judge and a special prosecutor, both of which are based in Monroe County, due to conflicts of interest with the individuals in those roles in Barren County because of Turcotte’s job at the time. Although he had stepped down from the role of chief at the end of 2014 and the city’s mayoral administration was about to change, he had remained with the department, first as an officer and eventually as a detective, the position he had when, in January 2023, he was accused of inappropriately touching a woman at her workplace while he was there obtaining a service the retail establishment in Glasgow offers.
A few weeks prior to that, the misdemeanor criminal charge was issued after an investigation by the Kentucky State Police.
“We are glad that the jury vindicated Mr. Turcotte,” Baker said after the trial concluded. “It’s been a long time coming and a long, bumpy ride, and they’re looking forward to starting a new chapter.”
Turcotte’s wife was present through the proceeding.
Turcotte’s accuser told Glasgow News 1, “I followed through; that’s all I can say. … I spoke what happened, and I gave it my all. I told my truth.”
Jury selection for the trial began at 9 and took about half an hour.
Special prosecutor Wes Stephens, the county attorney there, kept his opening remarks brief, stating that the woman accused Turcotte of inappropriately touching her.
“I’ll let them describe it,” he said of that woman and one of her co-workers who would later testify.
Baker said Turcotte praised the woman for the good job she had done and gave her a hug, “and she took offense to that.”
The woman was called to the witness stand and spoke about how, when Turcotte had been at her workplace earlier, she asked him whether he was a cop because he was carrying a gun, and she told him she had a gun as well because, due to her small stature, she had a fear of being kidnapped. Her height is 4 feet, 9 inches, she said later. She testified that Turcotte told her that he could see why someone might want to do that.
When he signed what was essentially an order form for the service to be provided, the signature included a heart, which she thought was unusual and showed her co-workers.
When he came back later to retrieve the item he left there to be serviced, she had leaned down to do something and stood back up, and at that time, he reached with his left arm around to her left side and placed his hand on her. She demonstrated that his hand came to rest on her upper thigh, adjacent to her groin area. She said Turcotte pulled her over closer to him as he did this.
When Turcotte left, she said, he signed his name as opposed to the other characters.
She spoke with her co-worker, who had been present nearby, a couple of minutes or so after Turcotte left and was advised to call her husband and then call the police. She testified that she wasn’t sure about calling the police because that’s where he worked, but about an hour after the incident, she did as suggested. She said she spoke with the police chief at the time, who later came with two other officers to the business to talk with her. A couple of days later, a Kentucky State Police trooper came to her home to interview her.
That trooper, Lt. Brandon Brooks, was present in the courtroom Friday at the table with the prosecutor but he was not called to testify.
Upon cross-examination by Baker, the woman was asked how long Turcotte had his arm around her. First she said it was 1 or 2 seconds, but it felt like a minute, and then she said she sort of counted it out as she sat there, and it was probably about 4 seconds.
Baker asked her whether Turcotte asked her out, asked whether she had a boyfriend or was married or asked what time she got off work, and the answer was no to all of those, and she acknowledged that she didn’t verbalize any sort of objection at the time.
Stephens redirected and asked whether she had ever experienced anything like that at work, and as she answered, her voice began to break up a bit.
“Did it immobilize you with fear?” the prosecutor asked, eliciting an affirmative answer, and he followed up by asking her whether she was able to voice an objection.
She said she wasn’t, adding, “You should ask before you touch somebody.”
Her co-worker, in answering Stephens’ questions, said she knew Turcotte from a prior encounter with him in 2021 and “didn’t like him,” so when she saw him come in, she excused herself from the area to go to the bathroom, but when she looked back through the glass door and/or window, Turcotte was hugging the woman and he still was when she came back out, so she estimated the touching lasted more like 3 to 4 minutes.
She also demonstrated where she saw Turcotte’s hand on the woman’s body, describing it as the pantyline, but with her right hand on her right side.
The co-worker said the woman looked “absolutely horrified” and panicked at his actions right away.
“I could see the look on her face. … She wanted away from Mr. Turcotte,” she said.
The co-worker also described the touch as firm, not light.
She confirmed to Baker when he began questioning that she had an unfavorable opinion of Turcotte when he arrived.
By 10:05 a.m., the prosecutor rested his case, and Turcotte took the witness stand after a brief recess. He denied that he signed anything when he dropped off the item and said he signed with the heart, plus the letter U, and his first and last initial on the latter trip. He said he always signs digital receipts that way because signatures are so easy to fake.
He said that he told the woman repeatedly what a great job she did, and they were chatting and she was smiling. He said after she leaned down and stood back up, she was about 6 inches from his left side, and he reached around her and placed his hand on her left waist – between the armpit and beltline – for “less than 2 seconds, a second and a half at most.”
Turcotte said, “I would never touch anybody down there,” referring to the area the woman and her co-worker demonstrated.
“That’s not my character. I’m happily married, plus, my wife would beat me if I did anything like that,” he added as his wife smiled from the gallery. He said there was no malice in what he did.
Stephens showed Turcotte a document and pointed to an area where he said the heart plus U plus initials were and then to a place at the bottom of the page, where Turcotte said that wasn’t his signature. And Turcotte said that both the woman and the digital were incorrect.
The prosecutor asked Turcotte about his height, which the defendant said was 6 feet, and then discussed where the woman would “come to” in relation to him, heightwise. He said that with a “natural” interaction, Turcotte’s arm would maybe be around the woman’s shoulders, but he physically had to lean over to put his hand even on her waist and pull her toward him.
“Did you ask her permission, if she felt comfortable with it?” Stephens asked Turcotte, who responded with a “no.” He gave that same answer to questions of whether she had given her permission or reciprocated the hug in any manner.
“She was frozen with fear when you touched her?” the prosecutor asked, with Turcotte denying the characterization.
District Judge Kristi Castillo read aloud to jurors the law Turcotte was accused of violating – Kentucky Revised Statute 525.070(1)(a) – noting that they would need to be convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that the evidence showed that he did this in order to find him guilty.
The statute says: “A person is guilty of harassment when, with intent to intimidate, harass, annoy, or alarm another person, he or she: (a) Strikes, shoves, kicks, or otherwise subjects him to physical contact.”
If they found him guilty, she told the jurors, they would also need to decide the penalty, and the law allows for a maximum fine of $250 or imprisonment for up to 90 days or both.
And she told them the decision must be unanimous.
Baker, in making his closing statement, reiterated multiple times the wording of the jury instruction that contained the law, emphasizing the “intent” element in particular.
“The facts are what they are,” he said, rereading the instruction aloud. “It’s just not there.”
Stephens closed by stating: “She shouldn’t have to say, ‘Don’t touch me.’ You should not assume it’s OK.”
He said she was already on guard after the encounter when they discussed guns and the kidnapping concern and then she saw his unique signature.
The prosecutor said Turcotte’s intent was clear in how he pulled her toward his groin area.
“There’s no justification for that kind of touch,” Stephens said, adding that Turcotte thought he could get away with it because of his position as a police officer and his size.
The jurors took roughly 70 minutes to reach their decision, and after she read the verdict, Castillo dismissed the charge against Turcotte.
The then-detective had been placed on administrative leave with pay when the department received the complaint in January 2023, and an interpersonal protective order was issued against him in February 2023 to keep him away from the person who lodged the initial complaint, but it was allowed to expire after a year.
Turcotte’s employment status was changed to administrative leave without pay May 5, 2023, after the criminal charge was filed. In August 2023, subsequent to a private hearing before the Glasgow mayor in July, his employment was terminated.
He appealed that decision in Barren Circuit Court, but the case was dismissed; he then appealed the dismissal with the Kentucky Court of Appeals, where it is still pending as briefs and responses are being filed. He has unsuccessfully sued the city twice before on similar matters.
Comments