{"id":13007,"date":"2025-10-20T22:15:06","date_gmt":"2025-10-20T22:15:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/13007\/"},"modified":"2025-10-20T22:15:06","modified_gmt":"2025-10-20T22:15:06","slug":"former-deputy-acquitted-of-sex-charges-6-years-after-arrest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/13007\/","title":{"rendered":"Former deputy acquitted of sex charges 6 years after arrest"},"content":{"rendered":"

ST. LUCIE COUNTY, Fla. \u2014 A jury has acquitted a former St. Lucie County sheriff’s deputy previously charged with sexual assault and battery while on duty.<\/p>\n

Thomas Johnson was arrested in 2019.<\/a><\/p>\n

He had been out on bond and was on leave without pay from the sheriff’s office until he was let go by the department earlier this year.<\/p>\n

A sheriff’s spokesman said Johnson was let go because he did not undertake mandatory retraining as required by state law.<\/p>\n

Johnson’s attorney told WPTV that her client had always maintained his innocence and that the accuser had a reputation for untruthfulness.<\/p>\n

The former deputy’s acquittal occurred on Friday after a week-long trial.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ST. LUCIE COUNTY, Fla. \u2014 A jury has acquitted a former St. Lucie County sheriff’s deputy previously charged…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13008,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[11702,171,173,172,11700,11701],"class_list":{"0":"post-13007","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-port-st-lucie","8":"tag-deputy-arrested","9":"tag-port-st-lucie","10":"tag-port-st-lucie-headlines","11":"tag-port-st-lucie-news","12":"tag-st-lucie-county-sheriffs-office","13":"tag-thomas-johnson"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13007","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13007"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13007\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13008"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13007"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13007"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13007"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}