C. Miles Marthinsen is a detective with the Walton County Sheriff’s Office who has risen quickly through the ranks despite having very little experience in law enforcement and only after integrity concerns on his polygraph examination were ignored by top leadership.
Prior to receiving an offer letter to join the department in December 2018, Marthinsen had spent the previous years making cabinets and other positions in the hospitality industry. You can review his application packet here.
As part of the application process, Marthinsen was required to take a polygraph examination.
Internal email communications show that Jennifer Falk, the human resources manager, expressed concern about Marthinsen’s polygraph results in an email to Undersheriff Donnie Clark.
Falk wrote, “Thoughts? I’m leaning towards DQ…integrity.”
Clark, a major at the time, replied, “I would let him move forward and let the board decide.”
Here is a screenshot of the internal communications.
Detective Marthinsen, with fewer than five years of law enforcement experience, was the lead investigator in the criminal case that was filed against former Walton County Administrator Quinn Robertson and Assistant County Administrator Joseph Turner. This matter was later referred to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.
Robertson and Turner had contacted the WCSO and met with Undersheriff Donnie Clark to request an investigation into information they had viewed on a county owned iPad that possibly implicated Commissioner Danny Glidewell and some of his political allies in a criminal conspiracy. This included Chas Galloway, a former employee and failed political candidate, who had synced his personal iCloud account to the device sometime in the latter part of 2021 or first quarter of 2022.
Though Robertson turned the device into the WCSO, Marthinsen used a false police report filed by Galloway in which he claimed his personal iPad had been stolen as the basis to begin a criminal investigation into Robertson and Turner in December 2023. The pair would eventually be arrested more than a year later on charges related to interception of communications.
Katie Bogenschutz, Turner’s criminal defense attorney, deposed Undersheriff Clark in March 2026 and asked him about Marthinsen. You can read the deposition transcripts here, but the relevant portion of that interview for the purposes of this article about Marthinsen is included in the image below:
Is that perjury?
Sure seems like Clark was misleading in his response to this question considering we have actual email correspondence between him and the human resources manager who wanted to disqualify Marthinsen from further consideration.
There were some other misleading and inaccurate statements provided by Clark in that deposition, but those will be discussed in a separate article.