Sheriff Ricky Headly Pleads Guilty to 4 Counts of Possession

The one hundred and sixty thousand residents of Williamson County breathed a giant sigh of relief on September 1 of this year when Jeff Long was sworn in as the new Sheriff of Williamson County. Long's assumption of the office ended a two year long odyssey of scandal, disgrace, and tragedy that can only be described as a Shakespearean Film Noir set to Country Music.

In January of 2007,then Williamson County Sheriff Ricky Headley, the self proclaimed "Singing Sheriff", was arrested by the Nashville police on a series of prescription drug felony charges. Turns out the good sheriff, when not arresting criminals in Williamson County, was allegedly committing a few crimes of his own. The most that can be said of Headley is that he had at least enough sense to commit these crimes in adjacent Davidson County.

Regrettably, Headley did not have enough common sense, shame, or grace to resign his office immediately. Instead, he abused his position of authority for over a year, in hopes of escaping the kind of justice that average citizens receive when they commit such crimes.

With felony charges hanging over his head, Sheriff Headley continued to run the Sheriff's office in Williamson County, making most residents of Williamson County squirm every time they saw a Sheriff's car go by. "What kind of place is this," we wondered, "if an alleged felony crook is directing the activities of law enforcement officers who have the authority to arrest law abiding citizens?"

On October 12, 2007, Sheriff Headley was indicted on numerous felony counts by a Davidson County grand jury. According to a press release issued by the Metropolitan Davidson County Police Department on that day, Headley was indicted on

"17 counts of Unlawful Distribution of a Controlled Substance, Class D felonies, 12 counts of Possession of a Controlled Substance, Class A misdemeanors, 3 counts of Unlawful Distribution of Legend Drugs, Class C misdemeanors, and 1 count of Possession of a Legend Drug without a Prescription, a Class C misdemeanor. The charges stem from a two-year investigation into Brooks Pharmacy, 4701 Trousdale Drive, which resulted in Headley being arrested for illegally obtaining nearly 2,000 doses of the prescription drugs Hydrocodone, Soma, and Cataflam between October 2006 and January of 2007. Headley was arrested January 31, 2007. The matter was sent for grand jury consideration after a preliminary hearing in April. Headley's $7,000 bond is unchanged from his January arrest. It is expected that Criminal Court Judge Steve Dozier will arraign Headley in the coming weeks on the Davidson County indictment. A Williamson County grand jury indicted Headley earlier this week on four counts of Official Misconduct."

Angling for special treatment, Headley stubbornly held onto his job as Sheriff, causing further embarassment to the residents of the county.

It wasn't until February 14, 2008 that Headley resigned, having cut a sweet plea deal that let him off the hook, serving no jail time in return for his decision to resign.

As the Nashville City Paper described the resignation the next day :

" Embattled Williamson County Sheriff Ricky Headley resigned his post yesterday after he accepted a plea deal that will keep him out of jail on drug charges.The Williamson County District Attorney's office, in conjunction with Davidson County's DA, agreed to offer the sheriff a suspended five-year sentence -- three years supervised probation, two years unsupervised -- with the agreement that he would enter a drug and alcohol treatment program and not run for any public office.


The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation and Metro Police arrested Headley over a year ago following a two-year drug sting operation. He was faced with felony charges of prescription drug fraud, which were dropped by the Davidson County DA's office as part of yesterday's plea deal.Headley, 44, would not comment following the hearing in a Williamson County Court, rather he referred questions to his attorney David Raybin.

"Everybody agreed that this was the thing to do and it also seemed reasonable to bring closure to this terrible personal tragedy for this man and his family," Raybin said. Raybin painted the sheriff as a man afflicted with addiction to painkillers following a back injury that led to his subsequent arrest Jan. 31, 2007, on charges he bought the drugs without a prescription in Nashville.

"The medication was originally prescribed by physicians," Raybin said. "He became addicted to the pain medication like many other people do in our state."

Attorneys in Davidson and Williamson counties said getting Headley out of office was their top priority in contemplating this plea deal. "The objective of [the DA] was to see to it that this runaway train comes to a screeching halt," said Derek Smith, Williamson County Deputy District Attorney. "We had to remove the sheriff from office. People in the county, I think, are embarrassed by the situation, and we had to respond to that."

Attorneys confirmed that Headley was not, in fact, selling the medication he had obtained from the pharmacy. Subsequently, the sheriff pleaded guilty yesterday to four counts of simple possession in Davidson County and one count of conspiracy to commit official misconduct in Williamson County."

By law and tradition, local county races in Tennessee are "non-partisan", but it took the concerted efforts of the local Republican Party and local Republican leaders to find and back a qualified candidate to replace the disgraced incumbent.

That candidate was Jeff Long, an attorney and former agent with the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation. A special election was set for August of 2008, and half a dozen other candidates jumped in.

Towards the end of the campaign, disgraced Sheriff Headley, who apparently doesn't have enough sense to realize he's worn out his welcome in Middle Tennessee, released a Gospel album, which he claimed was designed to help others who found themselves addicted to painkillers. Surprisingly, sales of the album were flat.

Jeff Long won the August 2008 election with about 60% of the vote, a veritable landslide given the number of other candidates, and he was sworn in as sheriff on September 1, 2008.

The Shakespearean element of the story continued, however. Although Long has done an excellent job righting the Williamson County Sheriff's offices since then, the same cannot be said for former Sheriff Headley. In September of this year, Headley's son, an employee of the Sheriff's Department assigned as a resource officer at a local middle school, committed suicide, apparently a consequence of a domestic dispute with his girlfriend.

There's a country song to be written about this tragic tale of woe. I don't really know if anyone would be interested in hearing it, though. Some things are best left forgotten, memories to be buried deep in one's soul.