A Mississippi man arrested nearly five years ago in Lonoke County with 10 kilograms of cocaine in the back seat of his rental car will get his day in court beginning this morning at the Richard Sheppard Arnold U.S. Courthouse in Little Rock in a trial expected to last three days.
Tommy Collier, 42, of Greenville, was stopped by Arkansas State Police on Sept. 11, 2018, after the vehicle he was driving -- a gray Chevrolet Malibu rented in Las Vegas -- reportedly ran onto the right-hand shoulder of Interstate 40 near Lonoke and was pulled over by Arkansas State Police Trooper Travis May.
An affidavit said Collier told May that he had driven onto the shoulder while adjusting his seat belt and said he had been to Little Rock to look for truck tires. According to the affidavit, Collier told May his cousin had brought the car to Greenville for Collier to use. The affidavit said that Collier's hands shook when he handed May the vehicle registration and said the Malibu had "a lived-in look that is an indicator of hard travel."
"This is very unreasonable and the travel itinerary is not consistent with the innocent motoring public," May wrote in the affidavit. "Due to Mr. Collier's extreme level of nervousness and unreasonable travel plans I suspected criminal activity."
After Collier refused to consent to a search, the affidavit said, May called for a police dog, which the affidavit said alerted on the vehicle, after which May and Arkansas State Police Trooper Mark Blackerby, the dog's handler, conducted a search of the vehicle. During the search, the affidavit said officers located 10 kilograms of suspected cocaine in kilogram-sized bundles wrapped in plastic and electrical tape, receipts showing Collier had come into possession of the vehicle in Nevada, and an airline tag on Collier's wheelchair showing it had been checked onto a plane on Sept. 8, 2018, the same day the rental car was picked up.
At a pretrial hearing Monday before Chief U.S. District Judge D. Price Marshall Jr., Assistant U.S. Attorneys Cameron McCree and Jamie Dempsey and Collier's defense attorney, Chris Baker of Little Rock, met to hammer out several issues, including questions for the jury pool and stipulations to exhibits for both sides.
"I see Mr. Baker is here but Mr. Collier is not," Marshall said. "My staff told me that Mr. Collier ... was unable to make it today for the pretrial, is that correct?"
Baker said Collier would arrive in Little Rock by Monday evening to be ready for the opening of trial this morning and asked that Collier's appearance for pretrial be waived.
Baker asked Marshall to limit the government's expert witnesses to opinions that had already been disclosed to the defense and to allow him to question a chemist on the government's witness list about his credentials.
"I believe that's all that's not disclosed from us," Baker said.
The defense attorney objected to three video clips government prosecutors said they intended to show the jury, saying that the videos could serve to unfairly prejudice the jury. In a motion to suppress evidence from the stop that Marshall denied last month, Baker had argued that video evidence had failed to document what May claimed to have observed, such as the rental car's "lived-in look" that Baker argued consisted of two duffel bags, a backpack and some personal items.
Baker had also argued in his suppression motion that the dog had failed to alert on anything inside the vehicle, which he said was evidenced by Blackerby's "numerous hand motions, redirections, and verbal encouragement throughout the exercise," and by May's expression of frustration at the dog's failure to give a positive alert, a contention that McCree disagreed with in a response to Baker's suppression motion. Baker argued that neither May nor Blackerby should be allowed to identify the substance found in Collier's rental car as cocaine during testimony or to say that the dog had identified cocaine during the sniff of the vehicle, saying that should be left up to the government's expert witness.
"In the video, that's something that's stated," he said. "Both on the call and in the anticipated testimony from the trooper."
"We anticipate calling the chemist to definitively establish that those substances were, in fact, cocaine," McCree said. "Trooper May's training and experience also led him to believe that's what was uncovered and that's why Mr. Collier was detained."
McCree said the substance had also field-tested positive for cocaine.
"I agree with the United States on these points," Marshall said. "The jury is entitled to see and hear the real-time version of this."
The judge denied any wholesale challenges to the government's expert witnesses, saying those objections should have been dealt with earlier.
"That ship has sailed," he said, but said he would limit the expert testimony to the parameters that had been disclosed.
"The day before trial is not the time to launch an attack on experts," he said.
After discussing McCree's list of witnesses for the trial and potential voir dire questions from both sides for the jury pool, Marshall ordered the attorneys to return to court at 9 a.m. this morning to clear up any remaining issues before calling the jury pool into the courtroom at 9:30.