Summary: A Georgia attorney allegedly worked out a deal with a witness in a child molestation case involving his client.
Investigators in LaFayette, Georgia claim that attorney Larry Hill met with a woman who claimed she walked in on a man receiving oral sex from her 12-year-old son. The man happened to be Hill’s client. Hill, 51, and the woman met on May 1 where she told him what she witnessed.
After their meeting, Hill returned to her later that same day with an affidavit he had written in “her words” where she supposedly confessed that she made up the incident of child molestation and had not seen anything improper. Little did Hill know but a Walker County Sheriff’s Office detective had been watching the entire interaction between the woman and Hill.
A grand jury indicted Hill for the plot to cover-up his client’s role in the child molestation incident. He was charged with influencing a witness and attempting to suborn perjury. His client Mark Lynn McGill, who is a former client now, is also facing the same charges.
Hill is the son of a retired superior court judge. He turned himself into the Walker County Jail after the indictment was made. His attorney Chris Townley says Hill was just acting on behalf of his client. Townley did not know the information in the affidavit had been made up. Since reading the indictment, Townley has requested more time to go over the details of the case. He was unaware that the woman had informed Hill of what she saw before he gave her an affidavit with the opposite facts stated.
The indictment claims that Hill wrote the affidavit and that Hill alleges that the victim recanted his statement. Hill wrote that the young boy falsely accused McGill because his client had taken the boy’s video games away. Townley explained, “That’s all new information. We haven’t had a chance to investigate.”
The case started in two years ago in June of 2015. The woman, who was McGill’s ex-girlfriend, told police that she saw him molesting her 12-year-old son. That case is still pending.
In April, the woman was arrested for methamphetamine possession. A friend of hers told investigators that McGill had been contacting her. He started out offering $20,000 if she recanted her testimony against him. Once she was arrested, he said he had an attorney she could use and he would pay her bond to get out of jail. At least one of those conversations had been recorded.
Hill met with one of her friends and then visited her in jail. The Walker County Sheriff’s Office incident report states that he told her an arrangement could be made but first she had to write letters to her son and sister, who was a witness in the original case, to tell them about the arrangement.
McGill’s new attorney Jeremy Penland says the facts of the case are backward. He claims that the woman’s friend, who is now her boyfriend, reached out to McGill after her arrest. The friend made the arrangement with McGill to provide an attorney and some financial support in exchange for her telling the truth that he never molested her son. Penland says the friend called McGill a number of times but only one conversation was recorded where the woman was directed to drop the charges before McGill could help. McGill said in the conversation. “If I don’t have these charges, I can probably do something. But if I do anything before I’m not liable in this child molestation case, I can get in trouble for influencing a witness.”
Penland contends that McGill is innocent of child molestation.
Do you think the excuse of “acting on behalf of a client” is a valid reason for witness tampering? Tell us your thoughts in the comments below.
To read about other child molestation cases, see these articles:
- Moving to Another Country and Molesting Children is Still Illegal
- New Child Molestation Claim against Michael Jackson
- Victim in Stephen Collins’ Child Molestation Case Will Not Sue
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