Evidence handling of New
Hanover County Sheriff’s Office in question.The New Hanover
County Sheriff’s Office Vice and Narcotics Unit may have
serious issues when it comes to chain of custody in preserving
evidence of crimes.
As law enforcement officers make arrest and confiscate
evidence, they do so in a manner to follow protocol. This is in
order to bring factual basis that a crime has been committed to
the courts, so with that fact, evidence must be preserved with
the utmost integrity. Failing on this point, would jeopardize
the prosecution of a case and could possibly cause the case to
be dismissed.
Recently, it has come to the attention of Blue Line Radio that
a New Hanover County Deputy assigned to the vice and narcotics
unit resigned on September 14th of this year, it was alleged that
his departure was due to misuse of seized property. It is unknown
as to what type of investigation was conducted, whether criminal
or internal, but his resignation was accepted by Sheriff McMahon.
This however is not the only problem that has occurred within
the New Hanover County Sheriff’s Office vice unit
.
Brenda Sue Curry, who was arrested following the vice unit’s
searches of her home and businesses on September 8th 2005, has
repeatedly questioned the Sheriff's Office's handling of her case,
specifically how much money deputies seized.
Now, over six years later, the U.S. Attorney's Office, whom originally
indicted Curry on Sept. 8, 2011 on a charge of money laundering,
conspiracy with no co-conspirators nor co-defendants, has now
had the charges amended to, 2 counts of Failing to File Taxes
and 1 count of gambling, both misdemeanors. This is according
to Federal Court documents. The case originally was under the
State’s prosecution; however Ms. Curry never had her day
in court. When asked why Curry's case wasn't resolved at the state
level, District Attorney Ben David said his office had tried to
resolve it through a plea offer.
Sara Sun Beale, a Duke University law school professor, said that
five years to wait on a case to come to trial is unusually long,
but the delay could be looked at in another way. "It wasn't
her duty to accept an unfair plea," she said.
Curry's case should be much swifter in federal court under the
Speedy Trial Act of 1974.
Issue of evidence forms and returns
When the search warrants were returned almost three months after
the raids took place, inventories said deputies had seized “U.S.
currency,” but not how much. Also, search warrant inventory
forms ask officials filling out the forms to name a person, usually
the property owner, with whom they left a copy of their inventory.
Deputies left that space blank on all the inventories filed in
connection with the Sept. 8, 2005, searches. The documentation
may not violate state law, which says only that warrants and inventories
should be returned “without unnecessary delay,” but
legal experts and New Hanover County Sheriff Ed McMahon agree
it's not the best practice.
Non-specific record keeping, legal experts say, limits defendants'
ability to reclaim their property, and leaves authorities open
to accusations of wrongdoing.
Michael Grimes, a retired Drug Enforcement Administration agent
teaches law enforcement officers how to prepare search warrant
affidavits, the delay in filing the search warrant inventories
is the unusual aspect of the case. “Usually the search warrant
is done within a day or two,” Grimes said.
While McMahon acknowledged shortcomings in the office's filings,
he also questioned Ms. Curry's allegation.
“She has never complained to the sheriff's office”,
McMahon said, and deputies weren't aware of her concern until
almost four years after they seized her property. This comment
is of some concern to us at Blue Line Radio, because Sheriff McMahon’s
predecessor, Sheriff Sidney Causey made a similar comment in regards
to the killing of Peyton Strickland. Causey said; “if the
boy would have just come to the door…”. It’s
always someone else’s fault.
Sheriff McMahon said that they learned of her grievance during
a chance encounter between Assistant Vice and Narcotics Division
Commander Joseph LeBlanc, and Brenda Curry's attorney, Alex Hall.
According to LeBlanc, he passed Hall on the street near the courthouse.
LeBlanc says Hall told him that Ms. Curry had alleged more money
was taken than deputies reported in the Sheriff's Office records.
Ms. Curry was asked to submit to a polygraph examination in order
to confirm her position. According to the licensed examiner, she
was telling the truth.
During the search of Ms. Curry’s residence, U. S. Currency
was found, while the amount of cash is in dispute, Curry said
that she had recently won a jackpot while in Harrah’s in
Atlantic City, NJ in 2005. The amount was over $180,000.00. In
her home was the cash that she had won, and some of the money
was in $10,000.00 increments with $10,000.00 gold colored bank
wrappers. The wrappers had been taken off of the stacks of bills,
and the Federal Tax receipt where she had paid the taxes on her
winnings, were left behind by the vice members.
Interesting note is that in the one of the detective’s home,
a box containing a cloth New Hanover County Sheriff’s badge
also contained a $10,000.00 bank wrapper.
In June of 2009, Assistant Vice and Narcotics Division Commander
LeBlanc, who had been involved in the 2005 searches in a support
capacity, went back and audited the office's records from the
operation. LeBlanc says he realized the records listed about $5,000
less than what was actually in evidence. That amount was $73,166.22.
When questioned, Sheriff Ed McMahon declined to show the Star
News the cash seized from Curry's businesses, but he said his
office is prepared to bring all the seized evidence to court,
should the case go to trial.
He also said the office's policies have changed since he has been
Sheriff, so an accounting error, like the one that occurred in
2005, won't reoccur.
Sheriff McMahon also says that in June, after LeBlanc found the
prior miscount of Curry's money held in custody, the sheriff's
office instructed vice and narcotics detectives to record the
specific amount of cash seized in search warrant inventories.
“While the paperwork wasn't perfect,” McMahon said,
“the problems have been corrected.”
“We didn't do the best job on the inventory,”
he said. “We found it, and we fixed it."
In an interview with Sheriff McMahon in November of 2009, McMahon
said again that his deputies are ready to bring all the evidence
seized in Curry's case to trial, whenever prosecutors call.
Chain of Custody
October 2010, evidence from several cases were discovered at the
home of a former New Hanover County Sheriff’s, Vice and
Narcotics Lieutenant, Scott Walker. Walker had resigned from the
Sheriff’s Office in late 2008 and it was during his employment
with the county that he had took the opportunity to take many
items of property belonging to the Sheriff’s Office to his
private residence. Other items at his residence were items of
evidence from various cases involving the vice and narcotics unit.
The evidence bags found in the home of Walker contained cash,
guns and assorted drugs and drug paraphernalia. Additionally,
there was an evidence bag of keys that belonged to the Curry case.
In the bag were both her personal keys and keys
to her businesses and machines.
Additionally Walker had vials and syringes of Human
Growth Hormones illegally in his items that he had illegally brought
into the country as per his own testimony during a public domestic
court hearing. The Pender County Sheriff’s Office was prepared
to take out charges on Walker, and eventually he was charged with
Misdemeanor drug possession and possession of drug paraphernalia.
These charges were brought to court. Walker appeared in District
Court in front of the late Judge John Carroll, who at the time
was alleged to be a business partner of Mr. Walker. Carroll allowed
Walker to plea, pay no fines or cost of court and deferred sentencing
for six months, where the charges would be dismissed if Walker
did not violate any laws during that period. Those charges were
dismissed in September of 2011.
So the question is, how could the Sheriff’s Office have
been “prepared” (as Sheriff McMahon stated in his
interview of 2008 and 2009), when Walker had been gone from the
unit with some of the evidence in October 2008, prior to those
interviews and how many other cases of serious consequence are
there with similar flaws in the custody of evidence seized by
the Sheriff’s Office?
An interesting fact is, that Lieutenant LeBlanc retrieved the
items from the home of the former deputy last October and to date,
no action has been taken in regards to alerting Ms. Curry nor
her attorney as to this additional miscue involving her case showing
that the chain of custody was not followed. This lack of oversight
may be an issue of great concern to the prosecution of Brenda
Curry’s case.
Curry’s case will come back for review by the U.S. Federal
District Court the week of October 26, 2011.
Excerpts of this report were found in earlier articles by reporters
David Reynolds and Veronica Gonzales of the Wilmington Star News.
Links to the “printable articles” are listed below.
http://www.starnewsonline.com/article/20100917/ARTICLES/100919603?template=printart
http://www.starnewsonline.com/article/20091120/ARTICLES/911209937?template=printart
http://www.starnewsonline.com/article/20091120/ARTICLES/911209936?template=printart
