CLEARWATER, Fla. — Moments in life, can’t be taken back.
“I can’t sleep at night,” Angela said.
Angela, who we are only calling by her first name, says she wishes she could forget a particular night last year.
“I had no idea what would happen,” Angela said.
The moment it all began was at a nightclub in Clearwater. She says she was looking for a waitressing job but quickly realized the place was not for her. Before she left, she says she waited in line to use the restroom when the bathroom door hit her in the face. She says the girl on the other side of the door began to fight with her.
“The next thing I know I am being assaulted by a steel door and a female ripping my hair off,” Angela said. Once others broke up the fight, she was hoping to find a deputy to press charges.
“I walked out of the bathroom. There was commotion going on. There were two girls that were into it,” Angela said.
She says she was still looking for some help but then: “Next thing I know I’m being dogpiled by eight deputies,” Angela said. “I am asking for help and not understanding why I am being arrested. They said you assaulted a police officer, and I said I did not touch anyone, then someone said tase her, and I peed myself. I was so scared.”
In body camera reviewed by 10 Investigates, you could hear Angela plead she never touched an officer as she was being arrested.
“I didn’t do this,” said Angela in the police car.
She was booked and charged with battery on a law enforcement officer. Moments after paying bail, she ran into the officer outside of the jail who said Angela had hit her.
“Ma’am, I never touched you,” said Angela in that body camera video.
She continued to claim her innocence, while the deputy stuck to her story. In the courtroom, the deputy was asked if she had any doubt Angela was the one who did it, and she responded, "no." A jury convicted Angela.
Angela says when she heard the words guilty, “It was a kick in the chest.” She says she knew then, it was a moment when she had to fight back.
“Something in my spirit told me to go file a complaint that night after court,” Angela continued.
She filed what she thought was an internal affairs complaint against the deputies she believed lied about her case.
“This got me convicted. I showed them the body camera and said this is not me. I showed them the police report and said she lied. A detective got a hold of me. I talked to him. and 28 days later everything was vacated and overturned,” Angela said.
So how did that happen? That body camera video showed the moments when the deputy was hit. You can see the woman's face before the deputy was struck. In that same video, you can see Angela standing in the bathroom hallway. We asked Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri about this arrest and the body camera video that should have proved Angela’s case.
“At the end of the day, we messed up. The deputy messed up,” the sheriff said.
When we asked him if he knew if anyone reviewed the body camera video that night, “My understanding is no, not that night. This is a big bar fight. She was arrested that night, but I am not aware of them watching body cam and when,” Gualtieri continued. “They were trying to do their job in a hostile environment, and they messed up.”
10 Investigates asked him if going forward, do they change policy to make sure this does not happen again?
“There’s nothing wrong with our policies. This is just an unfortunate series of issues. Things just didn’t go the right way,” Gualtieri said. “Thankfully I can’t think of a situation where something has happened like this.”
When we asked for what you might think of as an internal affairs investigation, that is what Angela thought she was getting, the sheriff told us they did an internal review instead —something he said is more involved.
But unlike an administrative investigation, there are no documents regarding a review.
“We decided to look at it through that lens instead of administratively but took it more seriously. This was at a higher level. We said, 'Do we need to put in a criminal investigation lane or administration investigative lane?' The best way to do that is to dissect the body cam video,” Gualtieri said.
They did and realized the mistake — a mistake the sheriff admits made it too far.
"I’ve been doing this for a long time and I’ve never seen that. I wish somewhere along the line somebody had said, wait a minute one and one does not make two here. It is not adding up,” Gualtieri said. “We own it. We are willing to make it right. Mistakes happen. we are not perfect.”
A mistake, Angela says, is a moment she will never get back.
“I was able to save myself. What about the other people that feel like they cannot fight back?” Angela said.
According to the non-profit Equal Justice Initiative, thousands of people have been wrongfully convicted across the country. One of the leading causes of wrongful convictions is mistaken eyewitness identification.
We reached out to the state attorney’s office to find out more, but the attorney on this case no longer works there. A representative for the state attorney’s office said they had no comment.