Battle case coming back to Grand Jury this summer

Inmate sits down with Atlanta TV station two years after Taser incident

A case that has been ongoing for two years in the Tallapoosa Circuit Superior Court is back in the spotlight following an interview on an Atlantaarea news station.

CBS 46 sat down exclusively with Brandon Coffman, who was an inmate at the Polk County Jail who was tased by an jailer in 2016 that was later fired.

Then inmate Coffman said that he was begging for the former jailer to stop while he was partially held in restraints after being loud and unruly while incarcerated.

Deputy Dallas Battle ( CBS 46 in their story named him as Harry Battle,) now 63, resigned not long after the incident and was later jailed himself.

Charges following the incident were then filed by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation following a review of the incident that month by state investigators.

In the years since, the case has gone before the Grand Jury which previously declined to indict Battle in the case. District Attorney Jack Browning said the charges are coming back before the Grand Jury again during the summer. If the panel fails to indict again, charges will not come back up before them again.

Coffman was in jail at the time in 2016 after a May incident that year with the Polk County Police, where he had been charged with aggravated assault, false imprisonment, battery and more. He’d also been jailed the previous month on assault and battery charges.

Battle had a previous history of trouble as well. His employment with the Floyd County Police Department came to an end in 2007 after a 17 year career when he violated departmental policies by then Chief Bill Shiflett.

It was later revealed that he had been accused of rape by a Northwest Georgia woman, but a Floyd County grand jury did not indict him.

Battle was the l ead investigator in the HarperReynolds murder case in Rome. Richard Scott Harper and Michelle Reynolds are serving prison time for the July 5, 2004, killing of Reynolds’ husband, Thad John Glenn Reynolds.

Coffman did not say in the CBS 46 report whether he planned to sue the Polk County Sheriff’s Office over his treatment, which the report also called “torture.”

It is against policy to use a taser on an inmate who is restrained at the jail, according to a statement in the CBS 46 report from Chief Jailer Al Sharp.