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Zachary Wester, 28, was convicted in May on 19 charges related to the three incidents that occurred while he worked for the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office from 2016 to 2018. Wester was fired amid the investigation, and prosecutors in the panhandle county dropped 119 cases he was involved in.
Wester was convicted in the cases of Teresa Odom, Joshua Emanuel and Steven Vann. During Odom’s arrest, Wester was seen on bodycam footage carrying a baggie to her truck.
“You’ve got to wonder, when the defendant was making these stops,” lead state attorney Tom Williams said at trial, “is it going through his head: ‘Is anybody going to believe this person over me?’”
Prosecutors had asked for a 15-year sentence, the Tallahassee Democrat reported.
Wester was convicted of one count of racketeering, three counts of official misconduct, three counts of perjury, three counts of fabricating evidence, four counts of possession of a controlled substance, three counts of possession of drug paraphernalia and two counts of false imprisonment. The sentences for those crimes would not usually merit such a lengthy sentence, but prosecutors argued Wester’s case was a special circumstance, according to the Democrat.
“With that great power comes great responsibility,” Williams said Tuesday at the sentencing hearing. “The defendant made choices to violate that trust and committed crimes against those people he was sworn to protect.”
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