Courts notebook

'Pill mill' trial set for last 3 charged

A doctor, an advanced practical nurse and a physician's assistant are set to be tried by a federal jury beginning Monday on charges accusing them of being part of a "pill mill" operation in west Little Rock from June 2014 through early May 2015.

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The three are the only remaining defendants in what started out as a 20-person indictment handed up May 20, 2015, by a federal grand jury in Little Rock. A series of guilty pleas by other defendants -- including Thursday's guilty plea of Anthony Markeith King, the owner of the purported pill mill -- has whittled the case before U.S. District Judge James Moody Jr. down to the health care professionals who are maintaining their innocence.

They are Felicie Wyatt of Memphis, who was a supervising physician at the Artex Clinic on Hermitage Road from June 2014 through September 2014; Kristen L. Raines, an advanced practical nurse at the clinic in 2014; and Aaron Paul Borengasser, a physician's assistant accused with Raines of issuing prescriptions for Schedule III and IV narcotics.

The clinic became the KJ Medical Clinic in November 2014. It was closed down as a result of the Drug Enforcement Administration raid that coincided with the indictment and was aimed at targeting sources of illegally obtained prescription medicine, which authorities say contributes to a national prescription drug abuse epidemic.

Two other physicians who were charged in the case, Shawn Michael Brooks of Little Rock and Jerry Scott Reifeiss of Conway, pleaded guilty this spring -- Brooks to a lesser charge of knowing about a crime and hiding it, and Reifeiss to conspiracy. Reifeiss died June 24, just two months after his plea but before he could be sentenced.

Other defendants included clinic managers, a nurse practitioner, a pharmacist, other clinic employees and people accused of distributing the drugs that officials said were illegally obtained.

Inmate sex abuse hearing delayed

A criminal trial that had been scheduled to begin this Monday in a federal courtroom in Little Rock is for a former classification sergeant at the Pulaski County jail, Scott Hazel, who is charged with sexual abuse of an inmate.

Chief U.S. District Judge Brian Miller recently rescheduled Hazel's trial for Jan. 23.

An indictment handed up Dec. 2 by a federal grand jury alleges that on Feb. 6, Hazel engaged in a sexual act with a woman who was a federal prisoner at the jail. At the time, she was awaiting transfer to a federal prison to begin serving a five-year sentence imposed in December for conspiring with the intent to distribute methamphetamine.

The woman filed a federal lawsuit against Hazel and the county Feb. 12, alleging that the jailer had forced her to engage in sex with him on multiple occasions since November 2014 and threatened to harm her if she reported him, and that a "code of silence" and improper monitoring allowed the abuse to continue. Hazel and the county have denied any wrongdoing.

A jury trial on the lawsuit, which seeks monetary damages including punitive damages, is to begin Feb. 14 before U.S. District Judge Billy Roy Wilson.

Sentence upheld for drug kingpin

The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis has upheld the June 2015 conviction and resulting life sentence, imposed in February, of Demetrius Colbert, a Marianna man accused of being a large-scale cocaine distributor in Marianna and Helena-West Helena in 2010 and 2011.

Colbert, 40, was the only one of four men identified as drug kingpins in the FBI-led Delta Blues investigation to go to trial, the others having pleaded guilty and accepted varying prison terms.

The multiyear, multiagency drug trafficking and public corruption investigation was also conducted by agents of the IRS; the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; and the criminal investigation division of the Arkansas State Police. It resulted in the arrests of more than 70 people, including four law enforcement officers in Phillips and Crittenden counties.

Colbert was convicted of distributing more than 11 pounds of cocaine and wounding an FBI agent during the execution of a search warrant at his home early Oct. 11, 2011. He fired eight rounds from a .40-caliber handgun through his closed front door just after agents outside announced their presence and prepared to enter forcibly. Agent Wendell Cosenza of Virginia was struck in the thigh, and later had surgery to remove the bullet fragments.

Colbert maintained that he was half asleep at the time, didn't have his glasses on and didn't know that the people surrounding his house were law enforcement officers. He told U.S. District Judge James Moody Jr., "I think, Judge, if somebody beat on your door at 4 in the morning, I think your reaction would be the same."

He said he had been robbed six months earlier and was trying to protect his wife and children, who were asleep inside, from a repeat attack.

Agents reported finding more than $400,000, a gun, cocaine residue on the toilet that appeared to be from a sudden flushing, and jewelry worth close to $30,000.

Metro on 07/30/2016

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