Retrial in 'pot' case set for ex-LR officer

Former Little Rock police officer Randall Tremayn Robinson is scheduled to be retried next week on corruption charges that led to a jury deadlock last summer.

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The charges accuse Robinson, 40, of helping his half brother, who was also a police officer, escort what they believed to be 1,000 pounds of marijuana across the city while on duty in 2012.

While last year's jury deadlocked on those charges, which stemmed from an FBI sting operation, it did convict Robinson on a single charge of selling a half-pound of marijuana to a police informant in 2009. But since then, the Little Rock police officer and federal task-force member whose testimony led to the conviction has himself been charged with corruption -- specifically, purportedly mishandling money seized in search and seizure raids in 2008 and 2009.

In court documents filed this week, Robinson's defense attorney, Bill James of Little Rock, has threatened to raise those recent allegations if prosecutors tell jurors about Robinson's marijuana-selling conviction. James has also indicated that the forgery charges filed against former officer Charles Weaver in February were included in a sealed motion he filed this spring seeking a new trial for Robinson in the 2009 case. Weaver retired in September, five months before the charges were filed.

The charges against Weaver accuse the former narcotics officer of mishandling money seized in multiple search-and-seizure raids in 2008 and 2009, and later making up stories about where the money went, only to eventually admit that he had lost the money and then forged the signatures of two people to whom it was supposed to go to cover up the loss.

It is unknown what effect Weaver's charges might have on any other state or federal cases in which he has testified over the years.

During Robinson's trial, Weaver testified about how he helped mobilize an FBI investigation into Robinson and his brother, Mark Anthony Jones, after he caught Robinson trading a half-pound of marijuana for $600 outside a Little Rock apartment complex. Weaver said that on Aug. 4, 2009, he worked with a confidential informant who arranged in a telephone call to meet Robinson outside the complex, and then watched surreptitiously as the informant and Robinson met and the exchange was made.

An FBI agent who led the case against Robinson and Jones testified that information from Little Rock police was what led the federal agency to begin investigating the brothers in 2010.

Jones is serving 81/2 years in federal prison after admitting that he arranged for Robinson to help him provide a police escort in May 2012 for a delivery of 1,000 pounds of marijuana from a tractor-trailer rig in south Little Rock to storage facilities in the north part of the city. A man whom Jones knew to be a drug dealer told him that the rig had just come in from California. The rig actually was driven in by the FBI and the dealer was secretly working as an FBI informant.

FBI agents watched, using air and ground surveillance, as the officers -- both on duty, in marked cars and wearing uniforms -- each escorted a van into which boxes purportedly filled with marijuana had been unloaded from the rig as Jones watched, according to court records.

Just after the videotaped escort began, Robinson received a dispatch about a possible hostage situation in his district. Even though he was the closest unit, the surveillance video shows him continuing to travel in the opposite direction, directly behind the van, while numerous other police cars from across the city rush to the area with lights flashing.

Throughout Robinson's trial, James focused jurors' attention on whether there was any proof of Robinson's intentions during the sting operation. He asserted that Jones, who was more experienced and higher ranking than Robinson, tricked Robinson into helping him without telling Robinson that the vans supposedly contained marijuana.

James suggested that Jones also didn't tell the informant that Robinson was unaware of the crime he was helping carry out. The attorney said that way, Jones could ensure that the informant gave him two $500 cash payments -- one for him to keep, and the other for him to pass on to Robinson.

James told jurors that there was no video evidence that Jones ever gave half the money -- or any of the money -- to Robinson. There was, however, a video of Jones taking cash from the informant after the escort.

Prosecutors filed a motion earlier this week announcing their plans to tell jurors in Robinson's retrial about his conviction last summer, to illustrate his illicit inclination to participate in marijuana deals.

In a response filed Wednesday, James mentioned the Weaver case, warning that if prosecutors present evidence of the conviction, "then the defense will put on evidence to counter it. The evidence that will be used to counter it will be evidence of police corruption by the investigating officers."

He later confirmed in a phone interview that he was talking about Weaver.

The defense attorney also warned in the filing: "There will be as much evidence on the issue of the police corruption as the current offense. The jury will likely get confused as to the issue in this trial and the purpose for the proposed evidence. Thus, the evidence should not be admitted."

He cited a 2006 case in which the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a judge's exclusion of a defendant's prior convictions on the grounds that it would lead to mini-trials and distract the jury from the issues at hand.

On Thursday, however, Chief U.S. District Judge Brian Miller granted the prosecution's request to present the 2013 conviction as evidence in next week's trial.

Jury selection for the retrial is scheduled to begin at 9:30 a.m. Monday in Miller's Little Rock courtroom. The first trial was held before U.S. District Judge James M. Moody, who later recused from presiding over the retrial, citing senior status, and then retired. The case was then transferred to Miller.

The jury in Moody's court deliberated for three days before jurors announced July 19 that they were hopelessly deadlocked on the three charges concerning the FBI sting operation: conspiracy to aid and abet the distribution of 1,000 pounds of marijuana, attempted aiding and abetting the distribution of 1,000 pounds of marijuana, and failing to report a crime of which Robinson had knowledge.

Since then, prosecutors have added a charge accusing Robinson of lying to federal agents during their investigation of him and Jones.

Metro on 06/13/2014

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