JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Russell Tillis was in court Monday morning, a week before his scheduled trial on charges of aggravated assault on police officers.
The defense is seeking to suppress evidence, including the knives with which Tillis is accused of being armed and surveillance video of the incident.
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Lawyers for Tillis accused the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office of withholding evidence, specifically the surveillance video. Surveillance video was requested on several occasions, and defense lawyers were told that none existed, but about 5 minutes of video was given to the defense by a neighbor in May 2016, attorneys said.
The neighbor wasn’t deposed until last week, and he told Tillis’ lawyers that he showed the video to JSO the morning of the incident in 2015, and gave them a thumb drive containing the video the next day. It’s unclear if JSO ever told prosecutors about the surveillance video.
JSO said officers were at Tillis’ house to arrest him for violating injunctions neighbors had obtained against him. The motions will be argued Friday.
Tillis, 54, has been in jail since May 2015, when police said two officers were attacked with knives while they were while serving him with arrest warrants on unrelated charges of threatening a neighbor and violating an injunction.
Police announced in December that Tillis was charged with murder, kidnapping, human trafficking, abuse of a body and evidence tampering in the death of Joni Lynn Gunter.
About nine months after Tillis was arrested, police searching the home after receiving a tip dug up Gunter's remains.
Neighbors told police that Tillis' home was booby-trapped with razor wire and hidden pieces of wood with nails sticking up. The traps were cleared and police searched for a week but found only one set of remains on the property.