A Saline County man on trial for cocaine trafficking was found guilty Tuesday by a jury of seven men and five women after the conclusion of a two-day trial in federal court in Little Rock.
OC Rawls, 49, of Benton, was indicted in late 2019 along with five other people after a five-month investigation conducted by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration utilizing controlled narcotics buys, covert surveillance and wiretaps that prosecutors said implicated Rawls and several other people in cocaine trafficking in Central Arkansas.
Rawls was charged with one count of conspiracy to distribute cocaine and three counts of distribution of cocaine.
On Tuesday morning, Stephen Briggs, a special agent with Arkansas State Police assigned to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration office in Little Rock, continued his testimony from Monday, piecing the conspiracy together under the methodical direction of Assistant U.S. Attorney Anne Gardner.
Briggs testified that during the final month of the investigation, agents were authorized to put a 30-day wiretap on Rawls' cell phone. From April 15 2019 until May 15, Briggs said agents intercepted 82 calls and 345 texts relevant to the investigation.
An April 17, 2019, text message thread between Rawls and Kevion Littlejohn, Briggs said, showed Littlejohn checking in with Rawls as he drove back from Houston, Texas, to pick up cocaine for Rawls. The next morning, Littlejohn texted to Rawls that "G was talking about them thangs, said they been messed with, but they said that after I got back. I think they just talking because they ain't saying nothing while I was here."
Briggs explained that Littlejohn -- as Rawls' courier responsible for delivering cash to Houston and bringing cocaine back -- was talking about his most recent trip to Texas.
"They've provided some people with the narcotics they picked up and these people are complaining about the quality," Briggs explained.
Gardner asked what Littlejohn meant by his expression, "G was talking about them thangs."
"It's just slang, street terms," the detective said. "I mean, people aren't going to get on there and, hey, he's saying the cocaine is crappy. They're just not going to talk like that."
Briggs said that on May 8, 2019, a few days before the wiretap terminated, Littlejohn headed to Houston with two kilograms of the substandard cocaine to return and $56,000 in cash to buy two more kilograms, all of which was confiscated when he was pulled over in Texas on suspicion of DWI. Briggs said a plan to intercept Littlejohn before he crossed the state line into Texas never came together so the Texas Department of Public Safety was looped in to make the stop.
By that time, Briggs said, Rawls' behavior was growing more erratic as he began to suspect he was being followed. Briggs said Rawls' increasing vigilance was evidenced by a conversation between Rawls and an unidentified woman in which the woman complained that she was having trouble reaching him.
"He's getting a little paranoid now," the agent said. "He's been cutting his phone on and off because he thinks the police are tracking his phone."
"Were the police tracking his phone?" Gardner asked.
"Oh yeah," Briggs responded.
On May 15, 2019, Briggs said, the wiretap terminated. The following day, agents searched Rawls' Benton residence, the Tatum Street home in Little Rock that served as his base of operations, and the home of co-defendant Shonquelous Burnett on Valley View Drive in Little Rock. During the search, police located drugs, packing materials and other paraphernalia and arrested several people, including Rawls.
Briggs said recorded jail conversations between Rawls and his nephew, co-defendant Kenneth Johnson, showed Rawls still at the helm of his drug trafficking organization as he instructed Johnson on where to find approximately one pound of cocaine missed in the search as well as who to contact that still owed Rawls money.
"It's obvious he's still running his operation while he's in jail," Briggs said.
Through the next five witnesses, Gardner methodically buttressed Briggs' testimony with corroborating accounts from other officers.
Pulaski County deputy Cordarius Walker said on March 12, 2019, he was part of a surveillance team supervising a confidential source who was given $4,500 in DEA buy money to pay for an earlier cocaine purchase. Rawls had told the man to meet him in the parking lot of Sims Barbecue on Roosevelt Road but abruptly bypassed the location and pulled over a few blocks away to watch the parking lot.
The deputy said their informant caught up to Rawls at the intersection and "threw the money into his truck."
Walker also testified that on May 6, two days before Littlejohn was arrested in Texas, he saw Littlejohn meet with Rawls at a gas station on Cantrell Road in Little Rock. He said Littlejohn was driving the rented Buick Enclave he was arrested in two days later by Texas troopers. Rental records showed that Rawls had rented the vehicle.
Texas Highway Patrol officer Brant Smith described Littlejohn's arrest just north of Marshall on U.S. 59. Smith said he pulled Littlejohn over for speeding and driving on the shoulder of the road. His suspicions were raised, he said, when Littlejohn told him he was driving to Houston to see his sister but could not provide an address.
Prior to searching the car, Smith said, Littlejohn had told him to "put your gloves on," which he said he interpreted as permission to search. The two kilograms of cocaine and the $56,000 in cash were found behind a door panel.
Asked if Smith had gotten advance word of Littlejohn's trip through Texas, the trooper nodded.
"I was asked to make a traffic stop if I could," he said. "They indicated they already had probable cause."
Gardner said in closing that the totality of evidence contained in the wiretap and witness testimony confirmed the conspiracy that brought the drugs into Arkansas.
Rawls' attorney, John Wesley Hall Jr., pointing out that his client was never captured on video, countered that enough gaps existed in the government's case that no one could determine for certain what Rawls' role, if any, may have been in the conspiracy.
In rebuttal, Crews told jurors Rawls' guilt was evidenced by the conversations on the wiretap corresponding to the actions of Rawls and his co-defendants. Crews asked for a guilty verdict "because that's what the evidence says," as he pointed toward the five kilograms of cocaine laid out on the government's table.
It took the jury just more than two hours to find Rawls guilty on all four counts. U.S. District Judge Brian Miller told Rawls he will be sentenced following completion of a pre-sentence report by the U.S. Probation Office.
Rawls faces a possible life sentence.