TAMPA — When Jimmy Gardner was arrested 18 months ago on trafficking allegations, Tampa officials quickly promoted his past illegal incarceration and ties with Democratic politicians.
Police and prosecutors accused Gardner, 58, of offering to pay a 16-year-old girl for sex, choking her when she resisted his progress. The news of his arrest has become a small political sensation. It also attracted the attention of federal prosecutors.
But last month they dropped it.
Ultimately, the government lost confidence in the credibility of the accuser who admitted at a pretrial meeting that he lied in all statements to investigators at the previous meeting, according to court records. Other contradictions became even more complicated, and it was dependent on the words of the girl the prosecutor admitted to be troubled.
Gardner declined to comment through his lawyer.
“Mr. Gardner has no ill will to blame the suspected victim,” Attorney David Little said. “We are grateful and he certainly appreciates it. It made it clear that she finally made progress and revealed some of the misrepresentations to law enforcement, and Gardner looks forward to moving forward and putting this situation behind him.”
The exonerated man has been criticized
Gardner is from Tampa and performed in the Belmont Heights Little League, a well-known young man. In 1984 he was drafted by the Chicago Cubs and studied the offseason at Tampa College, playing four seasons in the minor leagues.
However, he is best known for his tragic story of his illegal beliefs at the 1987 West Virginia Rape. The incident was falsely testified by a blood analyst. Prosecutors were also not negligent if they didn’t disclose a lab report indicating that someone else committed the crime.
Gardner was exonerated in 2016 in 27 years in prison. He became a motivational speaker and later married federal judge Leslie Abrams Gardner, a sister to Stacey Abrams, a nationally recognized Democratic voting rights activist.
In November 2023, Gardner returned to his hometown and stayed at Renaissance Stampa International Plaza Hotel.
Police were called there early one morning after a young woman told some people that someone was trying to rape her.
She later told police that Gardner was walking down Fowler Avenue several hours ago when she stood up with her in a black Cadillac SUV. He asked if she wanted to “chill,” she said, “I want to do something for the money.”
She learned of record that he was staying in a “nice hotel” and “want to take social media photos.” She denied that there was talk of sex in the SUV, and was in record time. She agreed to “hang out,” but she said, claiming she was 16 years old and didn’t do anything sexual.
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They later went to his hotel.
In his hotel room, the girl said, Gardner watched TV and had a conversation with her. At one point, she said Gardner put a $100 bill in her pocket and asked if she would engage in sexual activity, court records say. She initially agreed, she said, but Gardner said she changed her mind after the encounter became physical.
She said Gardner had angered and told him to leave. The discussion continued loudly. When she cried out to him, the girl said, Gardner placed her hand on her neck, the court said. She ran out of the room and began knocking on the door. A hotel guest took her to the lobby, where police were called.
When the officer spoke to the girl, Gardner called the front desk and said he wanted to tell him his side of the story. He claims he met the girl in the lobby, and she took him to his room, according to court records. He said he believed she was an “escort” and said he had nothing to do with her. He claimed it was her who was angry.
Gardner was arrested on human trafficking and other charges. Within weeks, federal prosecutors took the case and took it to a large ju court, which returned the charges of sex trafficking of minors.
The case becomes vague
Court records note that the man’s DNA obtained from the girl on the night of Gardner’s arrest did not match him. There was little other physical evidence.
Gardner’s defense attempted to introduce evidence that the girl was involved in sex work. They alleged that “she is engaged in a pattern of lying to unsuspecting men about their age.”
The defense disputed the girl told Gardner that she was a minor. He claimed he asked if she was over 18 years old, and she replied “Yes.”
Court records show that the girl initially denied the police that she accepted the money for sex, but allowed her to solicit the man on North Nebraska Avenue in Tampa.
The defense retrieved a month’s worth of data from two mobile phones the girl used.
One phone kept a record of over 4,000 text messages. More than 95% of these messages were conversations with a variety of men, according to court papers submitted by the defense. They showed a pattern of reaching out directly to the men she met on a dating app. She frequently sent sexual photos of herself, the paper states.
Gardner’s defense identified eight cases that he accidentally told a man between the ages of 18 and 22 before meeting Gardner.
The judge granted a request from the prosecutor to ban evidence that the girl was involved in prostitution. The government also noted one of the text messages it sent to friends after Gardner’s arrest. This coincided with what she told the police.
“Some guys suffocated me like they tried to kill me,” she wrote, according to court records.
However, there were more defenses that were obtained that seemed to degrade her credibility.
A few months after Gardner’s arrest, the girl was appointed as a victim of two other sex cases. In both cases, police arrested a man who said he had solicited her on North Nebraska Avenue.
According to court records, in April 2024, the girl went to Tiktok “to boast about her role in the arrest of three men.”
In response to comments from viewers, the girl said there was a pending incident with the Florida Children and Family Bureau as she was involved in a “prostitution activity” on Nebraska Avenue, a record-setting state. She told the man she was “making money,” and emphasized that she didn’t consider herself a “snitch.”
State prosecutors ultimately decided not to formally claim the two other men, court records show. Neither of them were charged in federal court.
However, federal sex trafficking cases against Gardner continued.
His defense at one point argued that he was being selectively charged for his famous race and his race. Gardner is black. The other two men arrested were white.
The prosecutor denied the charges. The judge denied the defense’s request to dismiss the case on these grounds.
The trial was scheduled to begin this month.
Then, in late April, I asked U.S. Attorney Assistant Courtney Delhi to dismiss the case. At pretrial meetings with prosecutors and law enforcement, the girl admitted to lying to her previous statement, the prosecutor wrote.
The girl told Gardner that she was 16 years old. Rather, she said she was 18 years old. She said she lied because she was angry that Gardner had suffocated her.
Her testimony and the change in “other contradictions” made the government unable to prove the case.
“The evidence is insufficient to maintain a conviction based on the credibility of the victim,” Delhi wrote.
