Deputies accused of beating suspect

ALBEMARLE -- Less than two years after being voted out as Stanly County sheriff, Tony Frick has cast himself in an unlikely role.

During his tenure as sheriff, he thinks, county prosecutors and local law enforcement officers engaged in a "vicious conspiracy" to falsely convict a man of multiple felonies.

In an affidavit and interviews, Frick alleged that prosecutors and some of his own deputies retaliated against the man, Theodore Williams, who has a history of drug, larceny and assault convictions, because Williams sued them numerous times after his 2003 arrest on theft charges.

Frick said evidence Williams needed to support his own defense suspiciously vanished. A former Stanly deputy who helped Williams was arrested in retaliation, he alleged.

Frick said he was disgusted when he learned of a homemade poster that hung in a Stanly prosecutor's office. The poster, which showed a photo of a bruised and battered Williams, suggested that Williams was beaten in retaliation for the suits.

Williams, meanwhile, said the poster was accurate -- that he was, in fact, beaten by deputies while in custody.

Williams said he sent Frick's affidavit from February to the N.C. State Bar, which can discipline or disbar attorneys if it finds evidence of wrongdoing. When contacted by the Observer, bar officials declined to comment.

Frick's statements, and those made by Williams, are just the latest in a string of allegations concerning the 20th Judicial District, which lies just east of Charlotte. The Observer and other media have written extensively about allegations of prosecutorial misconduct in the district, which includes Stanly, Richmond and Anson counties.