By E. M. Squires, November 2008
This is a true story about what can happen to you when you talk to a cop without a lawyer and allow him to anger you to the point of smarting off. It is a story about small towns and their tendency to protect their own. It is a story of religious folk who cannot accept that their teenagers are just like other teenagers. It is most certainly a story of what could happen to your brother, boyfriend, father, or male friend when law enforcement and prosecutors are so rabid to convict that they forget about innocent until proven guilty.
That is what I ask you to think about - the innocent until proven guilty part. You don’t know me, so I can’t ask you to take my word for someone’s innocence. You probably don’t know any of the people in this story, which takes place in Levy County, so I’m not asking for a moral assessment on anyone. What I can ask  — while America sends countless young men and women to die overseas in a fight for what we call democracy and all that defines it – is, if this were your brother, son or friend being accused, would you want the case handled this way by the people we elect and pay to uphold the law?
The accusations unfold

Jeff Light moved to his mother’s hometown of Bronson, Fla, from Arkansas with his parents in summer 2004 following his divorce and their retirement. They adapted well to small town life, making friends with several families who attended church together and often gathered for dinner afterwards. Light became friends with a man named Jamie Hubbard and his wife Crystal, who lived with Crystal’s parents and attended the same church. Crystal’s teen-age sister Nicole and her friend Hannah, were very often a part of church group activities and ad-hoc gatherings. Hubbard and Light both worked for Pepsi Company in Gainesville and quickly settled into a routine of work, church and weekend gatherings for paintball, cookouts and movie nights.
In September 2005, 15-year-old Savannah Wilson began joining in the group activities, having known Hannah and Nicole from middle school. Light remembers meeting Wilson for the first time at a rodeo in October 2005 he attended with the Hubbards. Savannah was there with Nicole and Hannah. Savannah obtained Jeff’s phone number from Hannah and began calling and texting him. It may sound strange for a teenage girl to be calling a 26-year-old man, but keep in mind these families had a history of socializing together. Jill Light, Jeff’s mother, said the girls often called the house to make plans and spoke of Hannah and Nicole stopping by the Light household just to say hello. It seems that the Lights, the Hubbards, Nicole, and Hannah even took day trips as a group to Orlando for Disney World and an Arabian Nights dinner show.
On Wednesday, Feb. 15, 2006, Savannah Wilson showed up at Jeff Light’s house around 4 a.m. crying about “something going on with me and Jamie.” According to testimony, Jeff, who had to be at work by 5 a.m., dropped her off in the parking lot next to her house .  The parking lot of the Levy County Courthouse in Bronson is across the street from the courthouse itself and next to where Savannah lived with her family. This same lot is where Savannah later claimed she and Jeff parked for sex more than 85 times. The proximity of these buildings would be about 15 yards, about the same as the Hippodrome State Theatre and the dirt parking lot across the street, for example.
Savannah’s mother caught her sneaking back in that Wednesday morning and according to her own deposition, took Savannah to the police the next day because “I felt she was hiding something or covering up something.” After Savannah refuses to speak with the first officer on the case, they had a fight about sending Savannah away to school. That afternoon, Savannah finally disclosed to her mother that she was having a relationship with an older man. According to depositions, Savannah was interviewed by Det. Sgt. Scott Tummond on Feb. 17, 2006 where she admitted to a sexual relationship with friend Jamie Hubbard.

The investigation

Tummond next interviewed Hubbard, who was already at the police department on other business. Even though Tummond stated in his deposition, “It is not my normal procedure that I take a complaint and go arrest somebody. I need a bit more,” he read Hubbard his Miranda rights – because he is considered a suspect – and interviewed.
During his interview Hubbard claims Jeff Light is also having a sexual relationship with Savannah Wilson. Hubbard confesses to having sex with Savannah Wilson six times and accepts a plea bargain for three years incarceration, probation and a sex offender label. Hubbard supposedly told Jeff’s defense attorney that he knew Jeff didn’t do it. This was also overheard by employees at the Levy County Jail, but in a letter to me, Hubbard denied saying that.
In court documents, I noticed that Jamie Hubbard’s plea bargain and pending parole are contingent on his testifying “truthfully against” Jeff Light at trial. I found this wording really interesting, what if “truthfully” is not necessarily also against? Regardless, Hubbard was not called as a witness by either the prosecution or the defense even though he was moved from Marion to Levy County for Jeff’s trial.
Following the interview with Hubbard, Tummond interviews Savannah again on Feb 20, where she admits to and extrapolates on the alleged affair with Jeff Light. While both Jamie Hubbard’s (33 minutes) and later Jeff Light’s (107 minutes) interviews were taped, Tummond did not tape Savannah Wilson’s interviews, nor was there anyone else present during the interview (as in a female officer) yet references are made to Savannah’s mother being “excused” from the interview. After her second interview, Savannah called Jeff, telling him that he is going to be arrested. On Feb. 21, 2006, Savannah Wilson is sent to the Light House Children’s Home in Tallahassee and is not deposed by the defense until February 2007.
Following the phone call from Savannah, Jeff wonders if he may possibly be in trouble because he suspected the relationship between Jamie and Savannah and didn’t tell anyone. He is also wondering if there is some curfew for underage girls that he has violated by taking the girl home at 5 a.m. and not letting her parents know she’d been out. Knowing Jamie has been arrested, he decides to go to the station to find out what exactly is going on, assuming that he is going to be talking to someone about Jamie and Savannah. At this point, he’s not worried about accusations against himself, but thinks his friendship with Hubbard may cause problems at Pepsi Co.
In contrast to how he handled the Hubbard interview, Tummond said later under cross-examination he did not have to read Jeff Light a Miranda warning because Light’s was “not a custodial interview,” i.e. Jeff had come in on his own. Yet Hubbard, who also went to his interview voluntarily and who was also believed to be sexually involved with Savannah was Mirandized. Tummond admits he went into Light’s interview believing that the relationship was more than a friendship, and that Jeff’s statement gave him probable cause to obtain an arrest warrant. In his mind, Jeff was already a suspect. This behavior is in direct opposition to what other investigating officers told me about proper legal process to save the prosecution’s case by Mirandizing the accused the minute you believe him to be a suspect and/or the minute he starts to incriminate himself .
I was told officers are not required to read Miranda rights to someone just for an interview, only for an arrest. Most officers said they would prefer to have Miranda Rights in place for the legal security of the investigation.

What is missing?

It is interesting how quickly the subsequent “investigation” took place and how little was actually investigated. Reading over the case materials, I was struck most by what was missing. Rather than assume one officer is not doing his job (though Tummond admits under cross examination that he did no further investigation of the case after taking Jeff’s statement), I took random phone surveys of officers who hold Tummond’s position in other counties to find out what is done to investigate this kind of case. It seems it is not unusual for teenage girls to make these kinds of claims. In fact, accusations happen so often that both alleged victim and accused are closely investigated before an arrest warrant is issued to prevent the state from ruining someone’s life with an unfounded case.
All of the officers I spoke to would have immediately impounded the vehicles in which the sex supposedly took place. Jeff’s vehicle was not retrieved by Levy County until May 2006 and showed absolutely no sign of the girl who supposedly lost her virginity in it. No sign of a man she claims ejaculated outside of her body more than 85 times without using a condom. Other officers would have also collected the clothing the girl was wearing the night of the last sexual encounter. She claimed to have had sex with Jeff on Monday/Tuesday and was in the police station giving a statement on Friday, so in this case, the clothing would have been very relevant but they were not collected. Phone records would have been subpoenaed immediately, since they would have figured prominently in proving whether or not calls were made from Jeff’s phone to the girl’s and not just vice-versa. In fact, Savannah had her phone with her when she told Tummond that he’d be scandalized by the content of her texts with Jeff, yet no one looked at her phone. No efforts were made to get Jeff’s phone records until several months after the fact and by that time, according to Tummond’s court testimony, the company did not keep text records and no longer had call records for that time period. There is nothing in the documents I have to prove any attempt was made to get such records, only records of the search warrants for the cars.
One officer told me that given the sheer volume of the alleged sex (Savannah claims she and Jeff had sex 85 to 90 times from November 2005 through January 2006) he would have subpoenaed Jeff’s work records immediately to see if her dates coincided with Jeff’s days off. A quick glance shows that 85 to 90 times in a three-month period pretty much amounts to at least once a day. If they were only seeing each other three or four times a week, they would have to be going multiple rounds. According to both Savannah and Hubbard’s testimony, she was supposedly seeing Jeff and Jamie at the same time and managed to have sex with Jamie at least 10 times during that same period …yet, only at night between 11pm and 4am when she could sneak out. I have copies of Jeff’s work records from Pepsi showing that he clocked in no later than 5 a.m. on most days and often was not off before 6 p.m., making her claim seem difficult to achieve given the logistics.

The whole case

In court testimony, Savannah claims that she and Jeff had sex on Nov. 1 and she remembers it because that is the day she lost her virginity. On Oct. 31 and Nov. 1, Jeff Light clocked in at Pepsi at 5 a.m. and worked until 7 p.m. He worked Nov. 2 and Nov. 3 from 5 a.m. until 5 p.m. With a 40-minute commute each way, that’s two 15-hour days and two 13-hour days back to back. His average work week during fall 2005 was 63 hours for October, 71.75 for November, and 53 in December. During that entire three-month period, he had only one 40-hour work week. Add the commute to and from Bronson each day and any rational person would begin to wonder if that much sex is even physically possible and if it was, could any human without super-powers keep it up for three months? According to records from Pepsi, Jeff was never late and never called in sick. In fact, Jeff was never officially fired from Pepsi and was told he could reclaim his position there when this case was cleared. The same cannot be said of Jamie Hubbard.
Given the ridiculousness of Savannah’s story, plausibility is an issue causing me  to ask the officers I spoke with if, given the serious nature of the charges, the victim herself would have been investigated in any way. Every officer told me yes, absolutely, without a doubt, the girl would have been investigated: her home life explored; her relationship with her parents; conversations had with her teachers and other adults who knew her, etc. I can find no evidence of such in this case. It seems that Savannah Wilson, step-daughter of the Levy County Property Appraiser, had her words taken at face value.
Tummond made sure that Jeff knew who Wilson’s step-daddy is during the interview saying on tape, “So uh, yeah I mean he’s, he’s one of our county officials that doesn’t need embarrassment.”
The implication was that Jeff should just take the plea bargain that his first attorney (a former law partner of the judge assigned to the case at the time) had offered and forget about trying to defend himself because it might embarrass a county official? Does the fact that her stepfather is the property appraiser make the girl less likely to lie? Does his need for discretion supercede everyone else’s right to the truth? She’s a “truthful girl,” Tummond says over and over in the interviews. Throughout depositions and testimony I counted at least a dozen times she admitted she lied … to Tummond, to her parents, to Jamie and certainly to Jeff.
My own investigation found few folks surprised that Ms. Wilson was sneaking out to meet men at night, though quite a few were surprised at the men. In phone conversations where I fully disclosed that I was a writer investigating the weirdness of the case, both Savannah’s friend Nicole and Nicole’s father referred to Savannah as “promiscuous” without any prompting. It seems Savannah is no stranger to acting out. I was able to find her MySpace page showing her, still underage, laying in bed chugging Arbor Mist out of the bottle and posing with yet another man who looks to be several years her senior. (At the writing of this article, that MySpace page is no longer available and she has a new one that says she does not smoke or drink and loves God. But I did download those Arbor Mist photos to my hard drive.) Savannah’s mother was unable (or unwilling) to give me a contact phone number for Savannah, but did provide a P.O. Box address before she hung up on me. Ms. Wilson did not reply to my letter requesting her side of the story.

The verdict

There is apparently no obtainable record of Savannah’s initial interview, as it was not recorded and transcribed. In the arrest warrant for Hubbard, there are references to a statement made by Savannah in which she describes activities with Hubbard in detail, including a birthmark on his buttocks and towels he used for clean up. The defense did not receive via disclosure any such descriptions of Jeff Light, who has a number of very specific, very distinguishing marks on his person that a teenage girl enthralled with her first love would not likely forget. In fact, other than a seriously redacted copy of Tummond’s interview with Light that was submitted to the court as an unsigned “confession,” there isn’t any real evidence of a relationship between Jeff Light and Savannah Wilson at all.
Everything the prosecution had hinged on this supposed “confession” that Jeff Light made to Detective Tummond. Jeff received a phone call from Savannah warning him that Jamie had been arrested and that “they” were coming to get him. As mentioned earlier, Jeff was never read his Miranda Rights and for at least the first half of the conversation, thinks he is speaking to the detective about Jamie Hubbard and Savannah Wilson. I have listened to the original interview, as well as the seriously redacted version played for the jury, and it is halfway into the conversation before Light is made aware that an accusation has been made against him.
Is a confession a confession when it is taken out of context? Jeff  described the trouble as “smarting off” to the cop – not a good tact to take, but he says that since he was never read a Miranda, he was not taking it seriously. By the end of the 107-minute interview, obviously frustrated with the back-and-forth, Jeff is giving monosyllabic answers, basically agreeing with whatever the cop says so that he can go home, assuming it will all get sorted out.
The detective repeatedly questioned Jeff about the number of times sex occurred. Savannah says 85-90 times. Jeff agrees with the detective that the number is ridiculous. Tummond asks what would be a more likely number, to which Jeff replies he doesn’t know, maybe about 10? This is then documented as Jeff confessing to having had sex with the girl about ten times. Jeff tells the officer about giving her a ride home and not going in to talk to her mom because he didn’t want to get anyone in trouble. He makes the statement, “I guess I should not have done that” about taking her home. During the closing arguments of the trial, Assistant State Attorney Glen Bryan for the prosecution flashed this statement up on the wall while he talks about Jeff having sex with the girl.
Even more interesting than the lack of Miranda, lack of investigation and lack of evidence, was the motion in limine  — a request submitted to the court before trial in an attempt to exclude evidence from the proceedings. In this case the motion was presented by the prosecution and accepted by the judge to forbid any mention at trial of the relationship between Jamie Hubbard and Savannah Wilson. Though the prosecution admitted in opening statements that this was not a rape and there was no question of consent, rape shield laws were used to prop up the motion in limine and close the court for the girl’s testimony. In addition, this motion allowed the redacted interview to be submitted as Jeff’s “confession.” Anything the prosecution determined might lead to questioning about Hubbard was stricken from the version the jury heard. This allowed the prosecution to cut up the tape any way they wanted and that is exactly what they did. It was edited to sound very much like a confession. The judge did allow the defense to read their objections to the redactions into court record, without the jury present, of course.
Jeff’s attorney cited a Florida Supreme Court case where the defense is allowed to question the victim about her relationship with a third party and the judge, Stan Morris, cut her off stating, “I understand completely your position, and I’ve allowed you to perfect it for the record. If it’s wrong, it’s wrong. If this case is a conviction and it’s wrong, it’s going to get reversed. I’m fully aware of that. But we’re going to try this case on the parameters that I’ve set.”
Is any more proof needed than that from the judge’s mouth that this fiasco was about prosecuting a case instead of getting to the actual truth? If it’s wrong, it’s going to get reversed and never mind the lives destroyed and the taxpayer money wasted in the meantime?
Since Jamie Hubbard is the one who initially gave Jeff’s name, making him a person of interest in the case, Jeff did not get to face his accuser in court, nor even mention the source of the accusation. He was prohibited from mounting a defense – that defense being that Jamie lied about him in a panic hoping to cover his own ass. It was Tummond’s second interview with Savannah that brought out the alleged 85 or more sexual encounters with Jeff. She never mentioned Jeff in her initial interview. According to Tummond, Savannah was really in love with Jeff and told about Hubbard to try and protect Jeff. Another possibility is that Jeff Light would not give Savannah Wilson the time of day and she turned to Hubbard instead, later vindictively plugging Jeff into stories about things she really did with Jamie because it was getting her a crap-load of attention and sympathy from her parents and other older men, like detectives and prosecutors. The defense was not given the option of presenting Jeff’s side of the story because the motion that prevented them from mentioning Jamie. So Jeff essentially had no defense. To this day maintains that he did not have a sexual relationship of any kind with Savannah Wilson.
The jury saw it differently. Jeff Light was convicted of the lesser two of four initial counts, both of which happened to occur on the exact dates for which Hubbard was also convicted.
If I’d, like the jury, heard only that redacted tape, I’d have convicted too, but sadly I’ve been privy to much more information than the jury ever had access to. It is possible the jury convicted because they were given no other option and chose the lesser of the two counts in hopes of minimizing the damage. After the verdict, Jeff was jailed. Despite having been out on bond for two years awaiting trial (during which time he could have easily fled) Jeff was not granted bond until his appeal. Jeff Light is now serving a longer sentence than Hubbard, who admitted his guilt and took a plea bargain. Jeff will be in prison for five years, on parole for 10 and live the rest of his life as a convicted sexual offender. He’s lucky he missed the pedophile label by the mercy of the jury. He’s still in shock over what has happened; still emotionally shattered by the lies of people he thought were his friends. His appeal skipped the 8th Circuit where there is obviously no way for him to get a fair shake and has been filed directly with the Florida Supreme Court. The prosecution was granted an extension for their response, so the wait for justice continues. Meanwhile, Jeff juggles the parents and friends who want to see him on Sundays, Hubbard waits for his parole and a divorce decree – he has lost his wife and two children – and Savannah Wilson continues to live the good life, attending a local community college (according to MySpace) and living on a trust fund in a house left to her by her late father (according to Nicole).
We’re going to keep watch over Jeff Light. Some witnesses have been willing to talk to me. Some probably won’t after reading this article. Most of the people I’ve spoken to seem like nice people and they really do believe what they have been told by their friends or family. But does that excuse what has happened here if Jeff Light is truly innocent? Should a man be forced to serve time and then live with a sex offender label for the rest of his life because maybe someone lied, and, because of that lie, others are going to be embarrassed? Don’t false accusations and convictions negatively affect real victims when all is said and done? I am sorry for what has happened to these families – all three involved have been shattered to varying degrees - but I expect more from our judicial system and I hope in the further research of this story I find it. I hope you will join me and ask your own questions. Please feel free to sound in and explore this issue with me. Send your letters to The Light at the End, c/o Satellite Magazine, PO Box 2823, Gainesville, FL 32602.