Driver flashes photo with Jimmy Carter in effort to avoid ticket in Georgia, feds say
Jay Diamond was cruising down a Georgia interstate in his white BMW on Aug. 23, 2018, when a cruiser’s lights suddenly flashed. A Troup County deputy clocked him at 90 mph — about 20 mph over the speed limit, court filings show.
When the deputy got to his passenger side window, Diamond reportedly flashed what appeared to be a U.S. Air Marshal’s badge. But the deputy wasn’t buying it.
“I thought the story was shady from, you know, the time I had stopped him,” Deputy William Baker told the court during a deposition in October 2019.
Now Diamond is headed to prison.
A federal judge sentenced the 49-year-old from Phenix City, Alabama, to one year and five months in prison followed by one year of supervised release and 50 hours of community service, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Georgia said Thursday in a news release.
Diamond was found guilty by a federal jury on two counts of false impersonation of a federal Air Marshal at the end of May, court filings show.
Defense attorneys appointed to represent Diamond did not immediately respond to McClatchy News’ request for comment on Friday.
A photo with Jimmy Carter
According to federal court documents and testimony transcripts, the incident unfolded around 1 p.m. on Interstate 185 near exit 46, which runs parallel to the Alabama state line from Columbus to LaGrange, where Diamond was pulled over.
Baker was monitoring traffic in the northbound lanes when Diamond’s BMW blew past him, the deputy said during his deposition.
Within a minute of pulling Diamond over, Baker said he claimed to to be a senior air marshal, prompting Baker to ask for his credentials.
Diamond reportedly claimed to have left his credentials at home. According to the deposition transcript, Baker was skeptical and called for backup. He later asked Diamond to step out of his car.
“When (Diamond) realized that I was going to arrest him, he said, ‘Well, I have a picture of Jimmy Carter,’” Baker told the court. “And I (said) that doesn’t prove to me that you’re an air marshal.”
Diamond never got to show the deputy his photograph with the former president because, as Baker said, “I told him I didn’t need to see a picture.” But the deputy did look up Diamond on Facebook later to find the photo with Jimmy Carter himself, he told the court.
As the traffic stop continued, Diamond proceeded to name drop a sheriff somewhere in Alabama and asserted he was “patriot” who was “on y’alls guys’ side,” Baker said.
“I wasn’t sure how to take it. I took — I just simply took it as it was more of his, you know, babbling on about things he could do to try to persuade me to get out of this ticket, and that’s the way I was reading it at the time,” Baker told the court. “I felt like he was being dishonest about the fact that he was an air marshal.”
It wasn’t until Diamond was handcuffed in the back of Baker’s Tahoe talking to another law enforcement officer who arrived on scene that the truth emerged.
“(Diamond) just kept on indicating that he was stupid, he got caught up in the moment, he was overzealous with it,” Baker said.
He also reportedly told law enforcement his wife was going to kill him and that he “should have just took the ticket.”
‘It changed him’
A grand jury indicted Diamond, also known as Larry Allen Dilleshaw, in April 2019, court filings show.
Diamond spent one year and five months in jail before his case went to trial on May 26. Defense attorneys moved for acquittal on the second day, but a judge denied the motion. A jury subsequently found Diamond guilty on both counts.
Diamond was released from custody after his initial arrest. But the government said his “inability to follow his bond conditions” resulted in the judge revoking his bond and bringing him back to jail.
Prosecutors requested a sentence of one and a half months in prison on top of the time Diamond already served and 100 hours of community service. They said Diamond has 34 misdemeanor and traffic convictions on his record, plus two pending misdemeanor charges.
“Defendant has been given several ‘second’ chances throughout the course of his life and was able to avoid significant jail time,” the government said in sentencing documents. “He did not learn from those mistakes. Thus, this court must send a stronger message than was sent in the past.”
Diamond’s lawyers requested a sentence of time-served, saying he was never convicted of a felony prior to this case and “never spent anywhere close to seventeen months in custody.”
They said he grew up with an abusive parent and became a successful businessman running his own roofing company, A1 Roofman. But the business was “wrecked” after his arrest and his wife left him for a “longtime friend” and employee, Diamond’s attorneys said in court documents.
“The seventeen months Mr. Diamond spent in jail did not break Mr. Diamond, but it humbled him,” his lawyers said. “It unnerved him. It made him determined to comply with law. It deterred him. And it certainly changed him.”
This story was originally published October 1, 2021 at 4:07 PM with the headline "Driver flashes photo with Jimmy Carter in effort to avoid ticket in Georgia, feds say."
