Jury hears FDLE interview with disgraced Sheriff Darryl Daniels following sex scandal

Clay County's former sheriff says he was being stalked by his lover as he drove down Oakleaf Village Parkway on May 6, 2019, afraid that Cierra Smith might shoot him or he might shoot her if he stopped and things turned violent.

As the trial into whether he used his position to illegally order Smith's arrest entered its third day, the jury heard more admissions from Darryl Daniels as his Oct. 10, 2019, interview with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement interview was played.

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As Daniels sat quietly with his defense attorneys, he was heard apologizing to FDLE investigators for the grief he caused his wife when he finally told her of the affair with Smith, which started in 2014 when she was a Jacksonville corrections officer and he was her chief.

But part of the interview was about that May 6 drive home as Daniels stated he tried to get away from Smith when she appeared behind him, even driving over medians in a school parking lot. This happened only days after he said he told her "it's time to fall on my sword" and inform his wife about the affair.

Daniels is also heard saying he believed "she was out there for a long time" waiting for him to drive by since she did not know where he'd been that night.

"I felt like if I stopped that it could go south, as in a violent confrontation, a physical confrontation," Daniels said in the interview. "... The fact that she just showed up out of the clear blue sky was cause for alarm."

A summary of Darryl Daniels' case

Daniels, 57, was arrested Aug. 13, 2020, following the year-long FDLE investigation. Those charges include destroying evidence and three more counts of knowingly giving false information to deputies, court documents said.

More charges were filed in February against the suspended sheriff for two more counts of false reporting to law enforcement and a new one of tampering or destroying evidence, according to Clay County court records.

The governor removed Daniels from office and appointed Michelle Cook as interim sheriff. Cook then beat Daniels and four others to become the county's first female sheriff, and she officially finished his term before taking the job full-time.

Affairs of the heart lead to trouble

Daniels' legal troubles began in 2019 when the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office, where he had worked as jail director, announced an internal investigation into corrections officer Smith.

Smith has stated she met Daniels after getting hired in 2013, eventually becoming romantically involved with him "out of work on a weekly basis," according to information she provided in a Clay County report. She said she called off their relationship when she got engaged in 2015, then married and rekindled it with Daniels when she came back to work at the jail in 2019.

Based on the internal affairs investigation, then-Jacksonville Sheriff Mike Williams recommended Smith be fired that April.

New testimony details texts and FDLE interview

Wednesday jurors heard about the almost 2,000 text and voice messages that Daniels and Smith exchanged in the weeks before and leading up to her being taken into custody May 6 on the grounds of aggravated stalking and trespassing.

FDLE Inspector Keith Riddick spent a lot of time on the stand before and after the replay of Daniels' 2019 interview detailing those text messages recovered from the sheriff's cellphones, some sexually explicit.

Riddick related how Daniels, learning that Smith's internal affairs report with their affair included would soon be publicized by news media, texted her on April 26 that he must tell his wife.

"The only reason I want to be the one who breaks the news is to stop it from going viral," Riddick read from Daniels' text message to Smith. "If they [news media] tell it first, then it will take off. It will sting me, but I have to man up."

"This between me and you will be over soon," Riddick said Smith's response was. "You will never be able to see me again. If you want to save your marriage, I will be helpless."

Daniels' next message to Smith said he didn't know how his wife would respond to the news of the affair and probably would tell him to "call it quits."

On April 27, 2019, Smith texted Daniels, sounding sad, almost desperate as she said she knows what they have together is slowly coming to an end.

"There will be a point where you will not be able to be in any communication with me because you will be fighting for your marriage," Smith's message said. "I am about to lose everything. ... We both made some jacked-up decisions. But I remember telling you in the beginning that you will still have everything, and I have lost everything."

"Remember, I said I will help you," Daniels texted back that night.

FDLE records indicated that Daniels gave Smith $60,700 over time. He stated on the recording that it was his funds and never anything from the Sheriff's Office. He also said that while some of his text messages back and forth with Smith were probably explicit, they never had sex in a police car or on Sheriff's Office property.

"I never made a phone call to her from a Sheriff's Office cellphone or text," Daniels said.

Later text messages from Daniels to Smith detail how his wife, Denise, stormed out after he told her.

Riddick also related a May 3, 2019, text that Denise Daniels made to Smith using her husband's personal cellphone. She told Smith to never call again, that it was her phone and her husband doesn't want "your crazy ass."

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Denise Daniels also called her a "low-budget ho," saying she would see her soon, Riddick related.

Smith texted back an image of her and Daniels.

"You just worry about standing by your husband's side when News4Jax airs this story," Smith's text said. "Good night grandma."

Smith had testified Tuesday that she and Daniels arranged a meeting on May 6 in an Oakleaf Village Parkway park where she could give him a copy of the police recording of a phone conversation between him and her husband. But when the 2019 FDLE interview with Daniels was played, the then-sheriff told investigators "That didn't happen."

He had tried to break up with Smith, but several unsuccessful attempts didn't work.

"It's like the breakup never happened," Daniels said.

Daniels is then heard relating how he was driving home on May 6 from a meeting when he saw her Jeep pull in behind him. He said he made some turns to see if he was being followed, and she stuck with him. He said they went "around and around" for what seemed like 10 minutes, with "a million things going through my head" as he called his wife.

He said his wife told him to go to the empty school parking lot as he said he realized "it is not a good look" if people see the sheriff and Smith arguing in the crowded park parking lot across the street. Daniels said his wife drove over immediately and parked next to Smith after a deputy and sergeant appeared outside the school.

Daniels said the sergeant told him there was enough evidence to arrest Smith for aggravated stalking and trespass, and that's when he said he recused himself from the rest of the situation.

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Deputies told prosecutors they didn't feel there was just cause to arrest Smith, and she was released later that night. But the 4th Circuit State Attorney's Office requested the FDLE investigate Daniels after recusing itself due to conflict of interest.

In the FDLE interview, Daniels expressed remorse and referred to himself as a poster child for what not to do in a marriage. But he said he wanted to make things right with his wife if possible. She filed for divorce in 2019.

"I am pretty sure I told her Cierra was crazy," he said. "Because of this breakoff, she is hostile; not hostile to my wife, just hostile, period."

Daniels' trial is expected to last the rest of the week. A St. Johns County judge is overseeing the trial to avoid any conflicts of interest.

dscanlan@jacksonville.com, (904) 359-4549

This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Clay County Sheriff Darryl Daniels interview plays at sex scandal trial