HEADLINE: A climate of fear, mistrust; Eastern Kentucky's drug culture is so pervasive that some foes cower in silence

DATELINE: Whitesburg 

Jackie Blair's death set the rumor mill humming around here.

His family had reported him missing in July 2000. At first, people figured he had skipped town to avoid going to prison after pleading guilty in a cocaine trafficking case.

Then, in October, a hunter scouting for deer found Blair's skeletal remains in a car on the side of U.S. 119 in Letcher County. The car had gone some 250 feet off the side of a mountain. Blair's body was bound in jumper cables that were looped several times around his left arm, chest and waist, the state medical examiner said.

The medical examiner's verdict: homicide by undetermined means.

People quickly concluded that someone killed Blair because he had squealed to the cops about big-time drug dealers -- even though police insist Blair never told them about any drug activity except his own.

"He didn't tell us anything about where the drugs were coming from because he didn't know," said Danny Webb, the Letcher County sheriff.

Webb was in charge of the Kentucky State Police's Hazard post when Blair's body was discovered, and oversaw the investigation. He said there was "no proof whatsoever that there was a big conspiracy to kill Jackie Blair."

In Letcher County, though, the body of Jackie Blair is taken as a warning: Snitch on drug dealers and you risk your life.

It's a classic example of how the cycle of community suspicion often hampers law enforcement and the courts in Eastern Kentucky.

There's such a distrust of the system -- informed by both fact and fiction -- that many people are willing to believe conspiracy theories. Those theories, in turn, increase the level of distrust.

Beth Carrender, the 4-H agent at the Letcher County Extension office, said the Blair case still worries her. She recently offered that "theory has it he was going to sing, so they killed him. I fear for his family."

"Maybe he was going to tell on somebody," said Delbert Anderson, the Letcher County coroner. "It affects the community real bad, people talking about it and wondering how that could happen in a small community."

All across the region, people fear that drugs come closer every day to owning the place. They say that the very institutions -- courts and police -- that should fix the problem aren't working.

Joe Hood, a federal district judge for Eastern Kentucky, said the suspicion isn't surprising.

"I could understand where they get that attitude. Every time you turn around, somebody's sheriff has been convicted for being involved in the drug trade," Hood said.

Residents have taken note.

Starla Hampton, a member of the Hemp Hill Community Center in Letcher County, said she was looking out her kitchen window one day and saw a drug deal in progress across the street.

"I told my husband, 'I'm seeing a deal go down,' and he said, 'Keep your mouth shut or we'll get burned out.'"

Why didn't she call the police? Hampton laughed at the question.

"Because," she said, "you don't know who's connected to who."

Sgt. Claude Little of the state police, who spent almost a year as the lead investigator on Jackie Blair's death, is familiar with such reluctance. "An informant may say, well, I don't want to give any information because I don't want to end up like Jackie."

Tracy Frazier, director of the Letcher County Action Team and an assistant football coach at Whitesburg High School, agrees. A local gadfly who shows up to argue in fiscal court sessions, Frazier splits his time between economic development -- such as helping people with business plans -- and pushing social issues, such as stricter drug enforcement.

"Most people feel deep down that the system is set up to allow drug crime to go on," Frazier said. "It's so ethereal. People don't know who controls the drugs -- if there's an organized network -- but what they do know is they don't get justice."

Conspiracy theories may be easier to believe in Eastern Kentucky because the area has had so many real-life examples of public officials gone wrong.

In county after county -- Breathitt, Lee, Morgan, Owsley, Perry, Wolfe, Letcher -- residents have seen their police, court, and other elected officials busted for cutting deals with drug dealers.

They've also seen local courts struggle.

A Herald-Leader analysis of court data found that the six worst counties in the state for prosecuting drug crime in circuit court were all in Eastern Kentucky.

During 1993, people in Letcher County read news accounts of their circuit judge, Larry Collins, being sentenced to five years for accepting a bribe of money and marijuana to protect a drug dealer.

In 2000, they read that the police chief from the small Letcher County community of Fleming-Neon, Danny Neil Yonts, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court to a bank robbery and firearm charge.

As part of Yonts' plea deal, several other charges against him were dropped, including conspiracy to rob a local pharmacy and possession of a controlled substance. Although the pharmacy charge was dropped, the court ordered Yont to make restitution of $1,957.55 to the business, Family Drug of Neon.

Across the region, people from all walks of life fear their society is being taken over by drugs.

On a gravel road in Bonnyman, just north of Hazard in Perry County, Della Fletcher sat on the front porch of her mobile home last summer, stringing green beans. She blamed all kinds of crime on the area's appetite for drugs. "I know one thing, this is a thieving place," she said. "They stole our heat pump and started to remove the hot-water heater."

Shelagh Cassidy is associate director of child and adolescent services for Kentucky River Community Care, a mental health agency that serves eight Southeastern Kentucky counties.

Drug users, she said, are getting younger. "It doesn't surprise you to have a kid come in and say they use marijuana on a regular basis who's 10 years old," she said, describing a "self-fulfilling prophecy of 'I'm in this situation, so I'll continue to be in it.'"

Matthew Gullion, pastor of First Baptist Church in Salyersville and head of a Magoffin County group that helps drug abusers, said drug users and dealers tell him that when it comes to selling drugs, "you can pretty much do what you want when you want to do it."

As Frazier in Letcher County puts it, everyone knows who the drug traffickers are, but the police don't arrest them.

Police acknowledge they often know who the dealers are. Getting enough evidence to arrest them, however, can be difficult and time-consuming.

State police Lt. Col. Rodney Brewer, who commands the division responsible for investigations, said many people have an unrealistic perception of how long it takes to handle drug complaints. TV shows, with their images of SWAT teams kicking down doors, are part of the reason, he said.

"They think if I call the state police at 3 they ought to have the (special response team) down there by 5 beating down the door," Brewer said.

When frustrated community residents see people selling drugs and not going to jail, it often causes questions about police.

Sometimes, the questions aren't far-fetched.

In Perry County, state police Detective Mark Lopez resigned after he was indicted in 1994 on charges of forging another officer's name on receipts. Police thought the object was to steal money meant for undercover buys. The case was dismissed when the prosecution's witness declined to testify.

State police also investigated an allegation that Lopez stole marijuana from an evidence room and had an informant sell it for him. A police investigator said in a report that it was "difficult for me not to believe that there is truth to this allegation."

Lopez was hired later as a detective by Perry Commonwealth's Attorney John Hansen. "With my knowledge that the charges were dismissed ... I really did not know all of Mark's history," Hansen said recently.

In 2001, Hansen fired Lopez after learning he was being investigated on federal extortion charges. He later pleaded guilty.

As Lopez's drama unfolded, Perry County sheriff's Deputy Freddie White pleaded guilty in 2000 to three counts of distributing Tylox and one count of marijuana possession. Investigators said White, who handled the department's drug dog, was selling drugs he had taken from evidence lockers.

After working with addicts and their families for years, Perry County therapist Michael Spare said he's noted "an umbrella fear" that the entire community structure supports the drug trade.
"The general consensus," Spare said, "is if it's so prevalent here, it must be allowed ... any time there's a high prevalence of anything, it becomes the norm."

Jackie Blair isn't the only dead man who showed up on the side of U.S. 119.

Harlan County sheriff's candidate Paul Browning Jr. was found last March, shot to death, in the burned remnants of his pickup truck near 119 in Bell County.

About a month before Browning's murder, he was videotaped, without his knowledge, accepting stacks of cash from Dewayne Harris, a man who had been charged twice with selling cocaine. (One of Harris' trafficking cases was amended to possession, and the other was dismissed.)

In gathering the money, Browning told Harris that if he won the election, he planned to protect some drug dealers. There has been no arrest in Browning's case.

The murder has spawned theory upon theory: Browning was killed by drug dealers whom he'd been bullying for campaign money, or local politicians hired a hit man to keep him from exposing their corruption.

Browning himself was sent to prison in the early 1980s for conspiring to kill two local public officials. His family is convinced that his death was a political assassination.

"I feel like the higher-ups don't want anything opened up. It blows my mind," said Browning's widow, Jayne. "People say things like they'll never solve it, it's all political."

The state police detective assigned to the Browning case, Mike Cornett, did not return phone calls for this story.

Another killing in last year's political season also had a chilling effect.

Sam Catron, Pulaski County sheriff, was shot in the head at a fish fry. The gunman has since pleaded guilty; his attorney said drugs played a role in the killing.

Police have also charged one of Catron's opponents and an accused drug dealer who had served as a police informant with complicity in the murder.

"I think most people are aware that drugs were some part of the motive" in Catron's killing, said Todd Wood, who was later elected Pulaski sheriff. "I certainly hope and pray that this will be an isolated incident, but then again, drugs are a huge problem."

Wood was at the fish fry the night of Catron's murder, standing about 20 yards away. To this day, he said, he remembers the faces of children who were there that night: "young children at a fish fry, having to witness this, the fear in their eyes."

The danger, said Graham Ousey, a University of Kentucky sociology professor who specializes in criminology, is that those children and many others will grow up with a skewed sense of right and wrong.

"Really what you've got happening is your sheriff is supposed to be your symbol, your representation of the law," Ousey said. "When they end up dead or involved in some drug conspiracy, it really challenges the whole legitimacy of the legal order."

Frazier, the Letcher community activist, said he'd been in his job for about two weeks when he got a stern lesson on how things work.

While attending the state's 1999 high school basketball playoffs in Lexington, Frazier said he was approached by someone -- he wouldn't give a name -- with a message from Letcher County's drug establishment.

People were tired of hearing Frazier preach about law enforcement needing to crack down.
"They told me they'd kill me or have me set up if I don't shut my mouth," Frazier said.

The activist has learned what to tell people when they come to him with tips about drug dealers.
"It's a liability for you and your family to go public," Frazier tells them. "People around here feel like if you stick your neck out it'll get cut off. And a lot of times it does."

HEADLINE: Butler sheriff tightens property room procedures 

Revamp is intended to deter thefts

HAMILTON - After two employees resigned last year and pleaded to misdemeanor charges involving missing money, the Butler County Sheriff's Office has been conducting an internal audit of thousands of pieces of stored evidence.

Sheriff Harold Don Gabbard said the probe entered a new stage Monday. One by one, about 10,000 items are being documented and transferred to a new property room equipped with additional safeguards to prevent employees from stealing or mishandling items, the sheriff said.

"I'm going to try to seal it up so tight that a fly couldn't get in there without being caught," the sheriff said.

Already, sheriff's personnel have spent hundreds of man-hours doing a preliminary internal audit and investigating additional accusations of property-room improprieties, said Lt. Mike Craft. So far, the audit showed seven guns remain unaccounted for, along with about $4,681 in cash, Craft said.

Record-keeping problems could be to blame, so "there's a chance that we could find some or all of these" seemingly missing items, he said.

But Craft also acknowledges additional discrepancies could surface after everything is checked and logged into a new database.

"There will be clarity at the end of the audit," he said. The process will probably take two more months, officials said. Then they will decide whether more criminal charges or disciplinary action will need to be pursued.

"We're doing everything we can to make this right," Craft said.

Relocation of the property room and revamping its outdated evidence-tracking system had been in the works since at least 1995, said Art Sauerwein, who oversees the property room.

Transferring evidence from the former county jail to Resolutions, the county's minimum-security jail, would have required a re-inventory anyway.

But the process is under increased scrutiny because of last year's events.

Two ex-employees admitted taking small amounts of money, Craft said.

However, the women also said they had improperly deleted about 2,000 entries from the property room's database, Craft said.

Donna K. Henderson, 36, and Karen A. Gilbert, 35, resigned their positions and were placed on probation last May after each pleaded guilty to unauthorized use of property and dereliction of duty.

In signed court documents, the women stated that, to their knowledge, "no weapons and/or controlled substances were illegally removed" from the property room while they were employed there.

The county prosecutor's office reserved the right to proceed with additional criminal charges if evidence surfaced indicating otherwise, court records say.

"We are not stating that every problem in the property room is attributed to the two ex-employees," Craft said. "If, at the end of the audit, the evidence points the finger in another direction, we fully intend on taking action against those individuals who are responsible."

HEADLINE: Former Piketon police chief allegedly kills self

DATELINE: IRONTON, Ohio 

A former Piketon police chief who served time in prison for stealing money and drugs from his department and was banned from law enforcement work for life killed himself, police said.

Nathaniel Todd Boothe, 26, reportedly was depressed over ruining his career.

Police said Boothe killed himself Tuesday following a police chase in Lawrence County in which he damaged a half-dozen vehicles and an Ironton school bus.

Jim Howard, principal at the Collins Career Center in Getaway, where Boothe studied law enforcement, said Boothe was depressed after the felony conviction that prevented him from ever becoming a police officer again.

"His main goal in life was to become a police officer," Howard said of Boothe.

After Boothe got in trouble in Piketon, he called Howard and cried. "He apologized to me. He was sorry he let me down. I just hate that this happened. I considered him a friend. I tried to counsel him, but he never recovered."

Boothe pleaded no-contest on Jan. 30, 2002, to charges that he took marijuana from the department's evidence room and stole $600 from a drug-enforcement fund. He was sentenced to a year in prison.

A funeral service will be held Saturday at 1 p.m. at the Phillips Funeral Home in Ironton.

HEADLINE: Evidence lost, police chief concedes; Items in 3 unsolved cases were destroyed in storage cleanup

In three open criminal cases, including the 1992 rape and murder of a 20-year-old woman, New Orleans police wrongly destroyed critical evidence, Police Superintendent Eddie Compass conceded Wednesday.

Flanked by District Attorney Eddie Jordan and top police officials, Compass nevertheless defended his department and downplayed the housecleaning of police storage under the previous police chief, Richard Pennington.

But he confirmed that in three cases, two rape-murders and a sexual assault, police "incorrectly" tossed out evidence.

"There are three cases so far," Compass said. "I don't know how many more we may have. We haven't found any more as we've been looking."

The cases were reported this week in The Times-Picayune, along with the fact that the NOPD has launched an internal investigation, reviewing destruction of evidence from old cases, some of which date back a decade or more.

For the first time since the revelation of lost DNA evidence in at least three open cases, Compass spoke publicly on the matter. He answered questions at a news conference that was originally called to announce new witness protection initiatives, designed by police and the district attorney's office.

But after Compass and Jordan announced they will travel to Brooklyn, N.Y., in the next few weeks to study how prosecutors and police screen cases, the evidence room snafu dominated the briefing.

Compass said an administrative investigation is ongoing and promised disciplinary action against any officer found to have violated NOPD rules. The police will send their final reports to the district attorney for review of possible criminal charges.

"Nothing has come to our attention to say this is anything criminal," Compass said.

Lost in the housecleaning

About two years ago, a routine purge of items no longer needed at the Central Evidence and Property Room grew into a massive clearing. Items were destroyed after being listed in an inventory or moved to smaller containers, police spokesman Capt. Marlon Defillo said.

The evidence that was destroyed included DNA samples in the rape and murder of Jennifer Altemeier, killed during Carnival in 1992. Last month, a detective told the victim's mother, who lives in Michigan, that police could not find the evidence.. Apparently, it was lost in the housecleaning.

The police officer who destroyed the evidence in the Altemeier murder case, Henry Bradford, died recently, Compass said Wednesday.

"I can't question a dead man," Compass said. "We're definitely going to discipline individuals where violations are found."

A preliminary report names Capt. Michael Pfeiffer and Capt. Michael Sauter as the commanders who oversaw the housecleaning, sources close to the investigation have said. Compass would not comment on the report, though, saying it was only a draft.

Police also tried to soften the sting of the mistake in the Altemeier case, saying an analysis of the DNA exists at a private DNA testing laboratory. But if a suspect is identified, his defense team would be unable to run its own DNA test on the physical evidence, a routine step before trial.

Asked what he would tell Altemeier's family about the tossed-away DNA evidence, the chief said, "She has my deepest sympathy. It didn't happen on my watch. I'm putting things in place so it doesn't happen again."

Evidence repackaged

Compass said the evidence sweep is being "sensationalized" and tried to quell fears that many cases are in jeopardy.

For instance, he said, the sweep of the storage room was largely one of downsizing rape and sexual assault kits, which hold crucial evidence from DNA swabs to hairs. Compass held up a white box about half the size of a shoe box that was used to store such evidence.

To make more room in police storage, Compass said, NOPD repackaged evidence into small plastic-bag type cases that can fit in the palm of a hand.

Although Louisiana law requires police to keep rape kits for 30 days, if a victim files a police report, the NOPD goes further, Compass said.

"We wait 90 days," he said. In an aggravated rape case, a charge that carries a mandatory life sentence without parole upon conviction, the kits are kept indefinitely.

"Things that happened, happened prior to our taking office," said Compass, who was named chief eight months ago. The department will ensure no items are destroyed without a "lengthy review of checks and balances," he said.

Compass blasted the idea that his administration is covering up any misconduct related to storing evidence.

"Anybody who knows me knows I don't lie. I'm a man of my word," he said.

Copyright 2003 The Times-Picayune Publishing Company, The Times-Picayune (New Orleans)

HEADLINE: Ex-cop is held in drug scheme: Cocaine evidence stolen, U.S. says 

A retired Chicago police officer was arrested Thursday on charges he regularly stole cocaine from a department evidence room and sold the drugs to support a lavish lifestyle of jewelry, furs, a huge house in the south suburbs and a $174,000 Rolls-Royce.

John L. Smith, whose police duties included keeping track of evidence needed for trials, was taken into custody at his Olympia Fields home by a task force of federal agents and police officers investigating the disappearance of 49 kilograms--nearly 110 pounds--of cocaine stored at the Cook County Criminal Courts Building.

A federal indictment charged Smith with one count of conspiracy to possess and distribute powder and crack cocaine; one count of making a false statement to a bank; one count of money laundering; three counts of tax evasion; and three counts of filing false tax returns. The 23-year police veteran faces a potential prison term of 10 years to life.

Prosecutors allege that Smith, who made about $55,000 a year when he retired in May 1999, tried to disguise the drug proceeds as casino winnings.

Smith, 54, was arraigned before U.S. Magistrate Judge Edward Bobrick and pleaded not guilty. He was being held pending a bond hearing next week.

In announcing the charges, 1st Assistant U.S. Atty. Gary Shapiro said Smith used a South Side drug dealer to sell the stolen cocaine and lived off the proceeds, which included giving himself a retirement gift--a 1998 Rolls-Royce Silver Spur.

Prosecutors have moved to seize the Rolls, a 1995 blue Ford Mustang convertible, Smith's 3,800-square-foot home on Oregon Trail in Olympia Fields, an apartment building on South Maryland Avenue in Chicago, and assorted jewelry and furs they allege were purchased with drug money.

"It's one of our objectives to take every cent away from him that we can find that in any way we believe we can prove originates from his thefts and drug resales," Shapiro said. "We're going to punish people like Smith who are alleged to have committed these sorts of crimes."

Smith's arrest follows the indictments last week of three Chicago police officers who allegedly took seven kilograms of cocaine from a drug dealer's vehicle that had been impounded by police, then resold five kilos and pocketed the proceeds. In addition, two weeks ago, a judge sentenced former gang crimes officer Joseph Miedzianowski to life in prison without parole for running a Miami-to-Chicago drug ring with a confederation of gangs.

Police Supt. Terry Hillard said the department must be vigilant against crooked cops.

"I know for a fact we have some police officers who should not be police officers, and we are very aggressively going after those police officers as we get information," Hillard said.

"We have to continually seek out those folks who want to taint the badge, who don't want to adhere to the oath."

The investigation that led to Smith's arrest began two years after he had retired. Police discovered in April 2001--the day before an Indianapolis man was to go on trial for dealing 20 kilos of cocaine--drugs were missing from the evidence room. Instead of 20 bricks of powered cocaine, they found a duffel bag and a 35 mm camera.

Despite the missing evidence, the man charged, Lyle Wooden, pleaded guilty as part of a deal that also meant his immediate release from jail.

Philip Cline, the chief of detectives, said the department launched an investigation and found that in all 49 kilos were missing from three separate criminal cases involving a total of seven defendants.

In all, Cline said, three defendants were convicted, including Wooden; two others were found not guilty; one defendant's case was dismissed; and police have issued an arrest warrant for another.

The Police Department has since moved a portion of its property and evidence duties to Homan Square, 3340 W. Fillmore St., and installed surveillance cameras and burglar alarms. In addition, seized drugs are kept separate from other evidence and property, and the comings and goings of the staff are monitored electronically.

Those safeguards, police said, were not in place at the Criminal Courts Building, where Smith was assigned from 1992 through 1999.

Federal authorities said it is not uncommon for drugs, whether they're seized by the FBI or Chicago police, to be kept in storage until a case comes to trial and evidence is needed.

Authorities would not say how they believe Smith allegedly stole the cocaine, but, according to the indictment, he conspired with others to distribute at least five kilos of powder cocaine and 50 grams of crack cocaine.

Smith allegedly took multiple kilos from the evidence room and gave them to a drug dealer. The dealer, listed in court papers as "Person A" but not identified, died recently from natural causes, authorities said.

The dealer in turn sold the drugs from two South Side houses and allegedly provided proceeds to Smith, who is accused of failing to declare income from the proceeds totaling more than $580,000 over three years.

HEADLINE: Search of trooper's home reportedly uncovers drugs, $ 

Investigators who searched the Stoughton home of disgraced state cop Tim White this week uncovered hashish, cash and cocaine, some of which may have been taken from a state police vault, a source said.

Stoughton detectives and state police searched his house Sunday and found a quantity of cocaine and hashish and $ 10,000 in cash, the source said. White, a former state police spokesman, hasn't been charged with any new crimes, officials said.

According to a source close to the case, investigators are probing whether White, a former narcotics inspector, may have stolen the drugs from a state police evidence room. Detectives have discovered a large quantity of cocaine is missing, the source said.

Part of White's job was to secure evidence and destroy drugs after court cases are concluded.

The 39-year-old trooper was arrested at his home two weeks ago on charges he slapped his wife and stuck a gun in her mouth and pointed it at her. He also jammed the gun into his own mouth and climbed into bed with their 4-year-old daughter with the gun.

The distraught cop kept himself holed up in the house with the .40-caliber handgun for more than an hour before surrendering.

After his arrest, his wife, Maura, told police he was on anti-depressants and used cocaine.

Prosecutors said he tested positive at a Brockton hospital for cocaine and marijuana.

According to court papers, the couple were leading a reckless lifestyle of coke-snorting and three-way sex. Maura White told police they once brought a man home from a Hub nightspot for a threesome, and Tim White told doctors they both used cocaine.

The gunplay erupted when Maura White returned from spending a night in a Dedham hotel and he questioned where she was and who she was with. The couple has a history of domestic violence, including a December incident in which cops were called to the house, and a July fight during which Maura White's rib was broken, prosecutors said.

White, who is in the midst of a 20-day psychological evaluation at Bridgewater State Hospital, faces domestic assault and attempted murder charges and has been suspended from the department without pay.

State police Lt. Marian McGovern said Attorney General Tom Reilly's office is investigating the case to "avoid the appearance of a conflict." There is also an ongoing internal affairs probe.
"We felt it was appropriate to bring in (the AG's office)," McGovern said. "We intend to do the right thing and do a complete and thorough investigation."

McGovern wouldn't comment on the search or what was found. Reilly's spokeswoman, Beth Stone, also declined comment on the search but confirmed the agency is handling the probe. The attorney general also has taken over prosecution of the domestic violence case from the Norfolk District Attorney's office, Stone said.

White's attorney, Tim Burke of Needham, said yesterday he had not seen the results of the search. "Nobody has notified me of any seizure (of drugs) whatsoever," Burke said. "Until I've seen a copy of the search warrant return, I'd have no comment."

HEADLINE: New clerk says office is a mess

El Paso's new district clerk said he has inherited an office in disarray from his predecessor.

Gilbert Sanchez, who took over the office in January after 20 years under the helm of former District Clerk Edie Rubalcaba, said his team found vials of dried blood and boxes of unlabeled knives lying around the evidence room. He calculated $166,000 in filing fees still owed by lawyers in cases dating back to 1971 and estimated there are millions of dollars in unpaid court costs. 

An auditor from the county attorney's office is working on a list of who owes what, but tracking down evidence will be tougher, Sanchez said. For example, one small box of blood vials in the evidence room on the second floor of the Municipal Court building is labeled 41585, a number that doesn't correspond to any case.

Evidence is given to the district clerk's office for safekeeping after a trial and until all appeals are exhausted. The district clerk should then give it back to the Sheriff's Department. But Sanchez said he found evidence dating back to 1987 on the shelves of a second evidence room on the 12th floor of the County Courthouse.

Rubalcaba said that she had ordered a complete inventory of evidence before she left office and that she thought all unmarked or old evidence had been turned over to the Sheriff's Department.

Although the law doesn't specify how blood evidence is to be cared for, it says custodians should prevent contamination and spoilage, which occurs when bacteria grow in non refrigerated liquid blood -- "eating your evidence," as Sgt. Steven Ward of the Sheriff's Department put it.
The district clerk's office never had a refrigerator in the evidence room and never asked for one, Rubalcaba said. The district clerk never asked to keep some evidence in the evidence refrigerator at the Sheriff's Department either, sheriff's officials said.

Last Thursday, the county granted Sanchez's request to buy a $400 kitchen refrigerator for storing such evidence.

HEADLINE: Montgomery County officer charged with drug theft

A Montgomery County sheriff's officer has been charged with stealing drugs from the county jail pharmacy.

Sheriff Dave Vore said Saturday that Sgt. Timothy V. Powell was placed on administrative leave following his arrest Friday. Powell, 31, was booked into Montgomery County Jail but was released on his own recognizance Saturday afternoon.

He is charged with one count of theft, a fourth-degree felony, Vore said.

"It's absolutely disheartening," Vore said. "Especially a sergeant, a supervisor."

Powell was hired as a sheriff's deputy in 1996. He was promoted to sergeant in August.

A jail paramedic, who was not identified, also was placed on administrative leave but has not been charged, Vore said. He declined to comment on the reason for the discipline, but said an employee could be placed on leave for office policy violations.

The jail employs about 10 paramedics, who are responsible for dispensing medication, said Maj. Gary Drummer, the jail's warden.

The jail audits drug supplies twice each day, Drummer said. The theft was discovered during an audit Friday, Vore said.

Other states watch as Illinois reshapes its death penalty system

SPRINGFIELD - Armed with more questions than answers and clearly frustrated with the inaction of the Illinois General Assembly, then-Gov. George Ryan made Jan. 11 possibly the most important decision in 30 years in the national debate over capital punishment.

That day, Ryan delivered his speech at Northwestern University and spared the lives of all 167 of the state's death row inmates. No governor in recent history had so broadly used the power of executive clemency.

But, then again, few states have such a shameful record - 17 inmates wrongfully sentenced to die and later freed from death row while 12 were executed.

"Because the Illinois death penalty is arbitrary and capricious - and therefore immoral - I no longer shall tinker with the machinery of death," Ryan said, borrowing a phrase from a famous 1994 dissenting opinion by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun.

"The Legislature couldn't reform it. Lawmakers won't repeal it. But I will not stand for it. I must act."

With that, Ryan walked off the stage and ended his 30-year political career but not before calling the national debate over the death penalty "one of the great civil rights struggles of our time."

State lawmakers from Maryland and New Jersey to Arizona and Nevada took note. At least a dozen states have committees reviewing their death penalty laws, and reports released so far are filled with references to the work conducted in Illinois by Ryan and his Commission on Capital Punishment.

Illinois, it seems, has become a model for these states, where lawmakers such as Nevada Assemblywoman Sheila Leslie, who heads that state's reform committee, watch closely.
Considering that, the Illinois General Assembly this spring very well could shape the future of capital punishment across the country.

"Those of us who follow this closely look at Illinois with interest," said Leslie, a Democrat from Reno, Nev. "I think it's one of the most important social issues we have as states right now, and I'm glad Illinois took the lead."

Illinois in the spotlight

Not since the landmark U.S Supreme Court decisions that struck down death penalty laws in 1972 and reinstated them in 1976 has the nation engaged in such a widespread and comprehensive review of the ultimate and final punishment - one that most of the civilized world regards as too barbaric and has abandoned.

A report of reform recommendations released by the Nevada Legislature last June is filled with ideas borrowed from the Illinois report released that April.

Nevada lawmakers, who meet only every other year, are armed this spring with a report released in June 2002 and have filed five reform bills recommended by Leslie's committee.
Other measures, excluded from the report because they narrowly lost the committee's final vote, are being independently introduced by lawmakers.

In fact, many of the 32 recommendations made by the Nevada committee mirror those of the Illinois commission. At least five specifically mention they are borrowed from the Illinois report released in April 2002.

In New Jersey, the state's General Assembly passed legislation that would create a comprehensive one-year study of the state's death penalty system. Deputy Speaker Alfred Steele proposed the legislation last month, days after Ryan's speech at Northwestern.

Steele noted Ryan's action in his appeal to New Jersey Gov. James McGreevey to place a moratorium on executions until a study is complete. New Jersey is preparing to execute its first prisoner in 40 years.

In Maryland, that state's attorney general asked Gov. Robert Ehrlich on Jan. 29 to abolish the death penalty. That plea follows a review of the state's capital punishment system similar in size and scope to the two-year study conducted in Illinois.

And in Arizona, that state's reform commission released its report Tuesday, calling for nearly two-dozen changes in Arizona's death penalty system.

Now in the spotlight, Illinois must decide if and how it will move forward:

• Will murder suspects be prosecuted under a system Ryan called "fraught with error"?
• Will lawmakers seek to reform or even abolish the system?
• And what example will Illinois set for the rest of the nation?

Legislation filed in the opening weeks of the Illinois General Assembly's spring session ranges from abolishing the death penalty to refining the clemency process to enacting controversial reform measures opposed by death penalty proponents and prosecutors.

Previous reform efforts, as Ryan noted, were blocked by conservative Republicans and intense lobbying efforts by prosecutors. But these are new times in Springfield. November's elections changed the political dynamics under the Capitol dome.

The conservative Senate Republicans who held reform efforts at bay last year have lost their majority. They take a back seat to reform-minded Democrats who dominated on Election Day and now control the House, Senate, governor's office and state Supreme Court.

Gone are Republican Party stalwarts, such as James "Pate" Philip, the former Senate president who once quipped he would personally "throw the switch" for the execution of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh.

The new Senate president, Emil Jones Jr., a Chicago Democrat, shares in Ryan's vision and has promised reform under his reign. And in an act of bipartisanship, Jones was appointed this spring as co-chairman to the Senate Judiciary Committee, where death penalty legislation is most likely to be heard.

The committee's co-chairmen - Sens. John Cullerton, D-Chicago, and Kirk Dillard, R-Hinsdale - are crafting legislation that would make sweeping changes to the state's capital punishment system but would not abolish it.

"I don't see an abolition effort because abolition politically in 2002 or 2003 cannot pass. We're not there," Dillard said. "But I do see a major push by the Senate president to reform our broken system."

A deal in the works

As the Senate's bill introduction deadline neared Thursday, Cullerton told the Rockford Register Star he cleared much of his daily schedule Wednesday to meet with prosecutors and Republicans to negotiate a reform package with widespread support. And Dillard recently told the newspaper he plans to reintroduce a sweeping reform package this month that failed last year.

Cullerton sees a massive, omnibus reform package as the best approach, despite conventional political wisdom that suggests there may be too many poison pills in a bill of that size that could doom it politically.

The senator, however, remained confident that a compromise for a massive reform package could be reached within a week and that the General Assembly would vote on it.

"We're definitely going to pass a bill that will substantially reform the death penalty statute," Cullerton said.

Cullerton is working with the Illinois State's Attorneys Association and Senate Republicans to craft the bill, using the 85 recommendations from the governor's commission report as the model. The Illinois Supreme Court already has adopted some rule changes called for by the commission.

One recommendation that will not be included, he said, is a requirement for police to videotape suspect interrogations. But that proposal, which has repeatedly failed in the past, already has found willing sponsors in both chambers.

A backup plan

Meanwhile, Dillard is busy crafting backup legislation in case Cullerton's negotiations fail.

His previous legislation contains nearly all of the 85 recommendations made by Ryan's commission. A handful of those recommendations met staunch opposition from conservatives and languished in the then Republican-controlled Senate.

Like Cullerton and the governor's commission, Dillard's new legislation will not call for abolishing the death penalty.

Dillard plans to remove some of the political poison pills from his bill this time.

For example, his proposal would create a pilot program backed by state funding that would require videotaped interrogations. And he also plans to exclude the commission's recommendation that local prosecutors gain approval from a statewide panel before seeking the death penalty. He would, however, create a review panel to compile statistical data.

But he plans to leave in one of the commission's most controversial recommendations - to reduce the number of "aggravating factors" that qualify a crime for the death penalty from 21 to five.

"The aggravating factors I'm going to leave in as they are, so we would reduce them," Dillard said. "So I'm sure we will have a spirited discussion and pick them apart one by one."

Constitutional challenges

These aggravating factors have been the subject of numerous legislative and constitutional challenges.

A state's attorney may choose to seek the death penalty if the murder fits into one of 21 categories - some of which involve multiple murders or the murder of police officers, teachers, children or the elderly.

But, by far, the most common qualifying factor used is the felony factor, which qualifies defendants for the death penalty if they commit one of 15 specified felonies, such as armed robbery, during the murder. The felony factor originally included nine specific felonies when enacted in 1977.

The Illinois Supreme Court showed great interest last summer in the argument that the long list of aggravating factors does not adequately limit the death penalty as a punishment for a select population, as required by U.S. Supreme Court rulings.

"One would be tempted to conclude that, in Illinois, it is virtually impossible to find a murder case that is not death eligible," Chief Justice Mary Ann McMorrow wrote in a special opinion.

In that case, the court upheld the death sentence of a DuPage County man, but practically invited further challenges by spelling out the missing evidence that may have swayed their decision.

Defense attorneys also commonly appeal death sentences by arguing that their clients are mentally retarded. State and federal law bar the execution of defendants not fit to stand trial. But, until recently, the execution of the mentally retarded was legal.

It wasn't until last June when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that executing the mentally retarded was unconstitutionally cruel. But the court did not define mental retardation, leaving that question to the states.

At the very least, that definition is the one item lawmakers must tackle this spring.
"We're getting very close," Cullerton said.

Reform or abolition?

While the heavy lifting may be done in the Senate Judiciary Committee by Cullerton and Dillard, a handful of other lawmakers aren't being deterred from introducing their own legislation.

House Republicans, led by House Minority Leader Tom Cross, R-Oswego, filed legislation last month that would require the Illinois Prisoner Review Board to conduct public hearings and make public their recommendations before the governor could grant clemency. Republicans in particular criticized Ryan's blanket clemency decision.

The Illinois Prisoner Review Board did conduct public hearings - more than 140 of them last fall - but its recommendations to the governor are confidential under current law.

Rep. Monique Davis and Sen. Barack Obama, both Chicago Democrats, have filed bills to require videotaped interrogations. The camera, they say, would provide an unbiased record and settle disputes of whether a confession was coerced or falsified.

Defense attorneys support the idea, but prosecutors argue there are too many legal technicalities to make it feasible. Not even powerful House Speaker Mike Madigan, D-Chicago, has been able to pass such a bill. He's tried and failed three times.

But Davis has faith that the political climate is right this year. Too often, she says, death penalty cases have been tainted with accusations that suspects were beaten by police until they confessed.

"I think it's really going to go this year," she said, "based on the number of people we released from death row and the claims that people confessed then we find out they had been tortured."
Meanwhile Rep. Art Turner, D-Chicago, is sponsoring the most drastic reform - abolition. He plans to call the bill for a vote in the House Judiciary Committee on March 6.

Turner subscribes to the same theory as former U.S. Sen. Paul Simon, a fellow Democrat, who co-chaired the governor's commission. Days before Ryan's clemency decision, Simon noted, as he has many times in the past, that the United States is one of the last industrialized nations in the world to use the death penalty.

World leaders from Europe, Mexico and Africa, including former South African President Nelson Mandela, wrote Ryan last year, praising his work and pleading with him to abolish the death penalty.

According to Amnesty International, the United States ranked third in the world in 1998 for executions with 68 behind China (1,067) and the Congo (100). Other counties trailing the United States that year included Iran (66), Rwanda (24), Vietnam (18) and Afghanistan (10).
"I believe we should not be killing people. The state should not be in the business of murder," Turner said.

Turner also cites the findings of the governor's commission as his proof that the system is broken in Illinois. The commission's report offered reams of data documenting the arbitrary, racial and disproportionate nature by which the death penalty is applied in Illinois.

As Ryan noted in his Jan. 11 speech, Illinois juries were three-and-half times more likely to sentence a defendant to death if the victim was white rather than black. More than two-thirds of death row inmates were black. And of those, 35 were blacks sentenced to death by all-white juries.

The commission also found that defendants charged with similar crimes received the death penalty in one county and not in another.

The effect

Most lawmakers agree that abolition is not politically feasible. Few dispute the need for reform. Unknown, however, is what will happen when these reforms come up for a vote.

Some wonder what the backlash to Ryan's blanket clemency decision will be from prosecutors and conservative Republicans.

Others wonder how the new political dynamics in Springfield will come into play. While Jones and Cullerton have the Senate geared toward sweeping reform, there are at least 35 new representatives in the 118-member House.

But lawmakers know one thing: The nation is watching Illinois.

"I hope that other states and the federal government would looks at some of these reforms," Cullerton said. "Maybe they didn't have the same problems we did, but maybe they did. And I think it's important they do look to us."

On the Web
* www.thejusticeproject.org, The Justice Project.
* www.deathpenaltyinfo.org, Death Penalty Information Center.
* www.ndaa-apri.org, National District Attorneys Association.
* www.justice.gov, Department of Justice.

HEADLINE: Drug Agents Raid Waste Firm Offices; Company's workers in Arizona allegedly sold chemicals seized from California meth labs instead of destroying them.

Investigators from Arizona and the federal government raided the offices of a California waste company Tuesday after authorities said they uncovered evidence showing that the firm's employees have been selling methamphetamine ingredients seized at drug labs to drug dealers.

Workers at Industrial Waste Utilization, a Montclair-based company that has a contract with California to dispose of hazardous chemicals found at clandestine methamphetamine labs, were illegally selling the chemicals to criminals, who were using them to make the drug, state and federal investigators said.

Investigators descended on the company's offices in Phoenix and its Montclair corporate headquarters after authorities learned of the alleged illicit chemical sales during a broader investigation into interstate methamphetamine trafficking. They said the criminal activity appears to have taken place primarily in Arizona, where the waste company was supposed to be collecting the drug ingredients for safe disposal. Authorities said they have made at least 25 arrests there in connection with the raids.

"They were supposed to be taking it [to Phoenix] and disposing of it properly," Environmental Protection Agency spokesman Mark Merchant said. "Instead, the allegation is that they were selling it out the back door, back to other meth labs."

In addition to criminal drug charges, Merchant said the firm or its employees may be charged with environmental crimes for failing to properly dispose of the hazardous chemicals.

Industrial Waste Utilization representatives in Montclair declined to comment on the authorities' allegations or the raids Tuesday. They said the company's attorneys were preparing a statement, but it had not been released by Tuesday evening.

A team of more than a dozen government agencies, including the Drug Enforcement Administration, took part in the raids, culminating months of investigative work. They made the 25 arrests in Arizona after targeting workers and suspected drug dealers there with 19 state search warrants and three federal search warrants. Investigators descended on an Arizona methamphetamine lab and several residences, as well as the company offices.

"Arizona is a safer place tonight than it was this morning," Arizona Atty. Gen. Terry Goddard said in a statement, adding that the investigation had "prevented at least 500 pounds of meth from entering our neighborhoods."

In addition, authorities executed 11 search warrants in Ohio, plus the one in Montclair, a community of 33,000 people in San Bernardino County. A spokesman for the California attorney general's office said that agents with the state's Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement assisted with the case, and will look into whether other charges should be brought against the company or its employees in California.

"The meth chemicals that wound up being sold out the back all came from California," Arizona Assistant Atty. Gen. Richard Travis said. Authorities were not only targeting employees, but had indicted the company with furthering an illegal operation, he added.

According to a federal grand jury indictment, a group of drug smugglers had been obtaining chemicals used to manufacture methamphetamine from workers at the company's Phoenix office, where the chemicals were supposed to be taken to be destroyed.

The chemicals were used to make methamphetamine that was taken to Greeley, Colo., and Dayton, Ohio, and traded for marijuana.

HEADLINE: Tip intrigues  comptroller; she wonders why sheriff won't allow audit of evidence room

After the county comptroller informed Orange County Sheriff Kevin Beary of her plans to perform a routine audit of his evidence room, a tipster within Beary's ranks called to say she would likely find a problem.

County Comptroller Martha Haynie said that the allegation, in addition to Beary's unprecedented refusal to allow her staff in to do its job, has turned what would have been a routine audit into something more urgent. 

"I did not have any suspicions until the sheriff took such a strong position against it," she said Thursday. "And as an auditor, I can't help but be concerned when someone makes this kind of effort to prevent someone from coming in."

Beary wrote in a letter to Haynie last week that he fears an audit could taint evidence, placing ongoing cases in jeopardy. The letter was his first response to news of the audit. Haynie told him of her plans in December.

The goal of the Sheriff's Office audit would be to gauge how effectively the evidence section keeps records and catalogs what it collects in criminal cases.

The standoff between the two elected officials sets up a potential courtroom showdown, and Orange-Osceola State Attorney Lawson Lamar has sided with Beary.

"We're in favor of him making every effort to make these cases safe for us," said Randy Means, Lamar's spokesman.

Haynie would not say who at the Sheriff's Office had called with allegations of a problem in the evidence room, nor would she elaborate on the nature of the tip.

"I'm frankly a lot more interested in the fact that the sheriff doesn't want me out there," she said. "I don't know why. Kevin and I are working to set up a meeting next week and I'm hoping we can sit down and talk and he can be more open with me about what his problems are."

She said she's performed audits in a handful of Beary's divisions and never encountered any friction.

Other auditors around the state said they've been into evidence rooms with no problems.
In the past four years, Tallahassee auditors have probed the city Police Department's evidence room twice. The auditors said they never touched anything and were always accompanied by a police official. No criminal cases were dismissed related to those probes, said Sam McCall, Tallahassee's city auditor.

Gary Chapman, a Tampa auditor, said he had no problems with an audit of Tampa's Police Department at the end of 2000.

Similar audits have also been performed in other states, as well. Nearly four years ago, Shawnee County, Kan., auditors reviewed the county sheriff's evidence room to no ill effect.

"If they're from a reputable agency, we don't have a problem letting auditors in, just to prove we have nothing to hide" said Shawnee Deputy Sheriff Martha Lutz, a department spokeswoman. "We want the public's trust."