Sheriff held daily ‘tea time,’ thought IT director would plant child pornography, jury hears
Fresh-faced corrections officer Cody Carrol was plucked from his position in the Johnson County jail’s transport section in early August 2025 and asked whether he was interested in taking on a new assignment serving as a personal aide to the sheriff.
Eager to be in a spot that Carrol hoped would advance his career in law enforcement, he accepted the role.
Carrol was to handle clerical duties. He would begin to manage Sheriff Adam King’s email accounts. He would be expected to prepare a briefing book for the sheriff’s appearances at commissioners court meetings.
And Carrol was, with his Apple Watch, to make audio recordings from the hall as King met with his senior command staff in his office, including an encounter in which King, for reasons that are in dispute, placed the agency’s second-in-command on administrative leave.
There was a second, critical element of Carrol’s new role. He was to be at King’s side.
“A spiritual bodyguard, if you will,” Carrol explained this week at King’s trial on an indictment in which the sheriff was charged with corrupt influence retaliation, connected to King’s placement on administrative leave of a top commander who was one of two people whose report of the harassment of an office training coordinator spurred a criminal investigation. King remains under indictment on the offense of official oppression, connected to his alleged verbal sexual harassment of a subordinate.
A jury in the 249th District Court in Johnson County has for eight days heard evidence in the case that has stirred tumult at the sheriff’s office, complicated relationships in the county’s political and policing circles and strained friendships.
The idea was for Carrol to become an eyewitness to the sheriff’s encounters with others in the office, to foil potential future allegations of improper conduct, Carrol testified.
“I would be there to validate one way or the other,” Carrol said of possible additional accounts of harassment involving King, then in office for about nine years.
Office manager Tara Raby understood Carrol’s new role to be a chaperone for King.
Ultimately the position was short-lived. Carrol was the sheriff’s aide for 17 days before the Johnson County Criminal District Attorney’s sought King’s indictment from a grand jury. Carrol returned to his job in jail transport.
When he was still in the assistant position, the young corrections officer was told to look out for what the sheriff termed spiritual warfare. King came to believe that a rebellion was underway at the agency, and Carrol was to watch particularly for attempts to falsely accuse King of sexual harassment.
King was focused on Dan Milam, the director of Johnson County’s Information Technology Department, according the testimony of Carrol and Ben Arriola, a Johnson County Sheriff’s Office captain and its acting sheriff. King and Milam were tangled in a disagreement over the implementation of problematic dispatch software.
Milam and Anna Goodloe, who appears to have confided to Raby about five episodes of sexual harassment that involved King, are married. King said that he believed that Milam directed his wife to make false allegations, Texas Ranger Patrick Garcia, who investigated the case, testified.
King also said that he believed Milam might remotely plant child pornography on the sheriff’s office computer, Carrol testified.
King was worried about surveillance, Carrol said.
“We swept his office for bugs, or listening devices,” Carrol answered a question posed by Assistant District Attorney Stephanie Bossworth, who is prosecuting the case with Christy May and Jason Judd.
The precise basis for King’s placement of Chief Deputy James Saulter on administrative leave is a central question for the jury.
Whether King decided to suspend Saulter for defaming him in a conversation with another commander or because of the chief deputy’s role in spurring the sexual harassment investigation is at the core of the trial.
Legally adjacent is whether the chief deputy's placement on paid leave last summer constituted illicit retaliation or was a legitimate procedural step.
The remark in question, made by Saulter, was a definitive declaration that King, who is married, had sex with former agency office manager Karen Charles, Lt. Richard Hogan testified. Charles died of cancer in 2023.
“He is [expletive] her or he was [expletive] her,” Hogan, to whom Saulter was speaking, recalled Saulter’s statement for the jury.
Raby also told the jury about “tea time,” which she testified were sessions that King billed as opportunities for employees to personally interact with him, but were in reality long stretches of the sheriff holding court. Tea time occurred daily in the beginning before becoming a standing hour once a week.
“Generally, tea time was just Sheriff King telling stories about Sheriff King,” Raby said.
Discord flared during a 15-minute recess on Wednesday when defense attorney Mark Daniel approached Raby, who was on the witness stand, to ask about obtaining sheriff’s office timesheet records.
Prosecutor May erupted when Daniel, outside the presence of the jury, discussed with Raby in what way he might get the records. “If it would help, I can have the sheriff order you to,” Daniel told Raby.
May, in the courtroom well, assessed aloud that the encounter was an example of brazen witness intimidation.
“Bless your heart,” Daniel told May.
“Bless your heart, if you have one,” May retorted.
Judge John Weeks denied May’s request to sanction Daniel and to hold King’s bond insufficient for violating a condition that directs him not to contact witnesses.
The trial, in which the state’s case is underway, is continuing Thursday.
This story was originally published July 2, 2026 at 2:07 PM.
