More than two years after she sustained a broken nose, seven broken ribs and a broken foot in an altercation with a state trooper during a traffic stop, Nancy Kemp pleaded no contest to a pair of charges this week in exchange for two other counts being dropped.
“I’m just too tired to continue to jury trial,” Kemp said Thursday after pleading on the DUI and obstructing-an-officer charges facing her.
Charges of resisting arrest and failure to dim headlights were dismissed in Logan County District Court.
“We probably could have beat him at court, but I just couldn’t take that chance,” she said.
Kemp, 70, was charged with the misdemeanor counts in June 2022, a month after Trooper Preston Cox pulled her over driving home from a bar May 11. After more than two years of delays caused by illness and Kemp’s fight to learn more about Cox’s use-of-force record, her case was set for an Oct. 21 trial date. A hearing on pending motions had been set for Monday.
Instead, on Thursday, Kemp received a deferred sentence and was placed on unsupervised probation for one year. After a year, if she has no arrest, she can go to court to ask that the charges be expunged from her record. Kemp had no criminal record before the May 2022 incident.
Asked to describe her life since her arrest, Kemp said, ” Honestly, hell.”
Kemp, who did not drive for about a year after her arrest, is facing a second operation on her jaw and is seeing a counselor.
“I see a highway patrolman, and I’m almost hyperventilating,” Kemp said. “And I still won’t drive at night.”
While the disposition of Kemp’s case was far from extraordinary, the Oklahoma Highway Patrol dash-cam recording of the traffic stop raised questions about Cox’s actions, OHP’s lack of body cameras and exactly what happened during the altercation on the side of the highway.
Kemp’s grisly jail booking photo captured the immediate aftermath of her facial injuries, but much of what transpired cannot be seen on the dash-cam recording. Her screams and pleas, however, can be heard for more than seven minutes.
The use-of-force interaction, which began inside Cox’s cruiser but quickly moved outside of it and off camera, occurred after he had stopped Kemp for driving with her high beams on within one car length of another motorist about 12:30 a.m. on Interstate 35, just south of Guthrie.
Cox had asked Kemp to sit in the passenger seat of his cruiser for questioning, and when he suddenly put the car in reverse to make room for a field sobriety test, Kemp protested. She reached for her belongings in an attempt to exit the vehicle, and Cox grabbed her. As they struggled and argued, he followed her out of the passenger-side door and onto the ground. In his report, Cox said Kemp resisted arrest and refused to comply with his requests. He said he struck her in the face five times with a knee and an elbow.
Despite Kemp’s extensive injuries and a lack of apparent injuries to Cox, an internal Department of Public Safety investigation cleared him of wrongdoing, and District Attorney Laura Thomas brought the four changes against Kemp.
In January, Kemp filed a federal lawsuit against Cox, Commissioner of Public Safety Tim Tipton and DPS seeking at least $75,000 in damages for physical injuries, medical expenses, mental and physical pain and other damages and losses.
Kemp said Friday she opted to enter a plea because she was told her attorney’s motion to dismiss the criminal case would not be considered and she was apprehensive about what a jury might decide. She said that, for the first time, prosecutors were offering her the opportunity to plead no contest to the two charges and dismiss the other two.
“I just feel like he’s won, and I feel defeated,” Kemp said of Cox, whose employee file and potential discipline records she unsuccessfully sought while her case was pending. “I feel ashamed that I stopped trying to pursue this guy, because he needs to be off the streets.”
Cox is no longer assigned to a patrol troop and is instead working in the Department of Public Safety’s public information office. In December, he participated in a podcast discussing training for OHP troopers.
DA: ‘Behavior during the crime can’t be tolerated’
Laura Thomas, the district attorney for Logan and Payne counties, said in a statement Thursday night that prosecutors are happy with the outcome of Kemp’s case.
“She received the same recommended sentence to the court that all other first-time like offenders received,” she said. “What’s important is that we have held her accountable.”
Kemp’s no contest plea means she did not admit or deny guilt, but Thomas argued that the plea also means Kemp believes there is enough evidence for a jury to convict her.
“Her behavior during the crime can’t be tolerated,” Thomas said. “She was a danger to herself, to her fellow citizens unfortunate enough to be on the road with her, and she was a clear danger to the trooper.”
Thomas said Kemp “started the altercation” and said her blood tested positive for alcohol and marijuana.
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“The trooper can’t just let her get back in her car and drive home because she is intoxicated. He can’t leave her because she had endangered the public. He can’t let her run onto the interstate and get herself killed,” Thomas said. “This is the problem in intoxicated drivers, their judgment is unsound, and they are dangerous to others.”
Kemp’s case dragged on for the first several months after she was charged because her original lawyer was a friend who is not a criminal defense attorney. The attorney also contracted COVID and was unavailable for some time.
In March 2023, Stephen Fabian, who worked 14 years as general counsel for the Oklahoma Department of Public Safety until 1986, took over her case. He filed a motion in April 2023 to get various reports and records. In May, he filed a motion seeking personnel records of Cox and asking whether Cox had any past criminal convictions. He also sought Oklahoma Highway Patrol training records and Council on Law Enforcement Training and Education records about Cox.
Prosecutors provided Fabian with law enforcement reports, which included summaries of expected testimony from many of the witnesses they planned to call. But in response to one of Fabian’s requests, Assistant District Attorney Sarah Conley argued that many of the items he sought were not discoverable under the state’s criminal discovery code.
“Even if taken in the light most favorable to the defendant, the defendant’s request casts such a wide net that it encompasses anything that might be potentially useful,” Conley wrote in March. “This is the definition of a ‘fishing expedition’ that is prohibited by Oklahoma law.”
Logan County Special Judge Diane Vaughan began presiding over the case in June and said it was time to get the ball rolling.
“The problem is that this case is so old, I’m going to go ahead and set it for trial,” she said during a June 13 hearing.
Fabian argued that he still was seeking information from the state, especially Cox’s personnel records and history as a trooper. Questions about why Cox left OHP’s patrol division for an administrative role also swirled.
“One requires documentation going into the officer’s previous involvement in similar kinds of cases,” Fabian said after the hearing. “There have been some similar issues and similar cases with this trooper.”
On Sept. 3, Fabian filed a motion to dismiss the case, saying Kemp’s arrest was unlawful and as a result any evidence stemming from the arrest was inadmissible.
“[Kemp was] deathly afraid of the confrontation at night on a lonely road for her safety to the extent that they had a conversation about her being safe with him,” Fabian wrote. “When he suddenly, with no explanation, began to back up the patrol car, she had no idea what he was going to do with her. She was not under arrest. The trooper didn’t tell her that he was going to perform some type of physical exercises, but only said he wanted to make sure that she was able to drive safely. It was at that point that she attempted to get her driver’s license and get away from the threat of the trooper intending to do her harm.”
Ultimately, however, the Kemp accepted the plea deal on two charges as a way to end the criminal case.
After her June hearing, Kemp was beginning to show signs of legal fatigue.
“They’re wearing me down,” she said.
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