Man sentenced to 20 years for staging phony police raid
By Chris O'Connell
Court TV
ORLANDO, Florida (Court TV) -- A Florida jury found William Fairchild guilty on seven of eight charges Wednesday for a bizarre crime spree that included dressing up as a sheriff's deputy, kidnapping a drug dealer and conducting a fake raid at the home of the dealer's family to find money, drugs and a car that had been traded for crack cocaine.
Fairchild faced nine felony counts during the three-day trial at the Orange County Courthouse.
The jury of three men and three women found him guilty of false imprisonment, armed burglary, petty theft, falsely impersonating a police officer and three aggravated assault charges.
After the verdict, Fairchild pleaded guilty to possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, a charge that was separated from the other charges so as not to prejudice the jury.
The jury also acquitted Fairchild on one charge of burglary with an assault weapon.
Fairchild, a 47-year-old transient from Tennessee, sat as a court employee read the verdict and then thanked each of the jurors from his seat when it was over.
Before he was sentenced, Fairchild dismissed his lawyer's advice to remain silent and addressed the court to explain his actions.
He told Judge Thomas Turner that he regretted any harm he might have caused the victims of his phony police raid.
"I felt sorry for the people in the house," Fairchild said. "I apologized to them."
But when the Judge asked him why he chose to dress up as a sheriff's deputy, Fairchild said his friend's situation with the car left him with one alternative: to literally take the law into his own hands.
"What are you going to do, call the police and tell them you traded a car for crack?" Fairchild told Linda Galceran when she asked him for help, he said.
"If you want to deal with the police, I'll be the police," Fairchild recalled saying.
Then with some satisfaction, he told Turner he thought he did a "professional job" during the raid.
After listening with disbelief, Turner called the trial "a bizarre case" and said Fairchild could have avoided the situation altogether by not associating with drug addicts.
"I don't think you deserve life, because you didn't set out to do what was done," Turner said. "But you made a series of bad of choices starting out with posing as a police officer."
Turner then sentenced Fairchild to 20 years in prison.
'What a mess'
Fairchild elected not to present a defense case in hopes that defense attorney William McClellan's questioning of prosecution witnesses would suffice to persuade jurors of a reasonable doubt on all charges.
During closing arguments earlier on Wednesday, McClellan focused on the inconsistent statements of several alleged victims, some of whom could not positively identify Fairchild in the courtroom as the man who burst into their home pointing a gun during a phony police raid.
McClellan also questioned the motives of Fairchild's two accomplices, who struck plea deals with the district attorney's office in exchange for their testimony against Fairchild.
Troy McPhillips and Linda Galceran, who accompanied Fairchild on a wild search for a car that Galceran had loaned to a drug dealer for $70 in crack cocaine, testified late Tuesday afternoon.
McPhillips told jurors that Fairchild was the ringleader of the group who burst unexpectedly out of a seedy motel bathroom dressed in the green uniform of an Orange County Sheriff's Deputy and proceeded to handcuff drug dealer Tyson Cummings and threaten him with a loaded handgun.
During the time Cummings was handcuffed in the back of the van, prosecutors said Fairchild threatened Cummings life unless he produced drugs, guns and the vehicle.
McClellan disputed that version of events during his closing arguments.
"I'll admit to you he's not a very smart guy," McClellan said. "Look what he got himself in the middle of. What a mess. But he only wanted the car. Mr. Fairchild did not have any intent to commit these offenses."
Prosecutor Mike Saunders asked jurors to look beyond inconsistencies in the testimony of several witnesses.
"When you handcuff somebody in a motel room, you escort them into a van and drive them around for hours and the man is begging to be let go, then you are terrorizing that man," Saunders said. "If he didn't have his handcuffs, if he didn't have a shirt and dress like a deputy, if he didn't have that van, this wouldn't have happened."
