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Ex-deputy gets year in prison for Taser incident

The victim says he was kicked and shocked and his wife was partially blinded in one eye.

By AARON SHAROCKMAN
Published April 24, 2007

A former Pinellas County sheriff's deputy was sentenced to a year in federal prison Monday after a jury said he used excessive force while responding to a 2004 hurricane in the Florida Panhandle.

Richard G. Farnham received the maximum sentence for his role in an altercation days after Hurricane Ivan hammered the small coastal town of Navarre.

Farnham, 35, kicked and Tasered a 56-year-old resident who thought Farnham was looting a nearby house, authorities said. Farnham also hit the man's wife, leaving her partially blind in one eye, the man said from his home Monday.

"It was an absolute nightmare," said the resident, Daniel Thompson, a former New York City corrections captain.

Farnham, who had been on paid administrative leave since his indictment in November, resigned this month, sheriff's officials said.

Sheriff Jim Coats, who testified on Farnham's behalf, said the sentence should not reflect on the Sheriff's Office.

Sheriff's officials have provided few details about Farnham's altercation, which occurred while he was on patrol with a Santa Rosa County sheriff's deputy.

But according to Thompson, residents believed Farnham and the second deputy were looting an undamaged house in their David's Landing neighborhood one night after the storm.

The neighbors, who saw the men in the house, yelled for them to leave. At least one neighbor called police. Another, a retired Air Force colonel, fired a gun into the ground.

The commotion eventually drew Thompson, who got out of bed and put a handgun in his back pocket.

After several more minutes, the two deputies left the house and started running toward Thompson, telling him to get down.

Thompson asked who they were, he said. One replied: "Sheriff's department."

Thompson said he went to the ground face down, took his gun out of his pocket and slid it away.

Farnham, Thompson said, ran up and kicked him in the head, dislocating a vertebrae in his neck. He kicked him several more times.

Farnham then ordered Thompson to turn over.

"He looked at me and smiled: You want to feel what it's like to be shot?" Thompson recalled Farnham saying. Farnham then shot him with the Taser.

In court, Farnham denied kicking Thompson and said he used a Taser because Thompson would not remain on the ground, the Pensacola News-Journal reported.

But federal prosecutors said the angle of the shot proved Thompson was on the ground when he was Tasered, the newspaper reported.

Charged originally with a felony, Farnham was convicted of a misdemeanor civil rights violation. The second deputy was not charged with a crime.

Farnham, who must also pay $2,382 in Thompson's medical expenses, was not immediately taken into custody. He has until May 29 to surrender to federal authorities.

[Last modified April 24, 2007, 01:22:47]