Salt Lake Tribune – by NATE CARLISLE
A defense attorney is asking that his client’s drug charges be dismissed and is accusing a former Ogden police officer — who was recently charged with drug-related crimes — of lying to a judge to obtain permission for wiretaps.
Attorney Randall Richards also suggests in court documents that the former officer, Don Henry Johnson, set fire to his own house last year and has lied about evidence related to the wiretap case having been destroyed in the blaze.
Johnson was charged last month in 2nd District Court with two counts of second-degree felony drug distribution. Each count carries the possibility of one to 15 years in prison.
In parts of 2013 and 2014, Johnson was assigned to the Weber-Morgan Narcotics Strike Force, where Johnson obtained a warrant to tap the phones of multiple people, according to court documents. Johnson suspected them of belonging to a drug trafficking ring operated by Ogden Trece — a gang local police have long attempted to vanquish.
One defendant, Bobby Gilbert Martinez, 37, was charged in 2013 with 11 first-degree felonies related to drug distribution. Charges allege that through phone monitoring and on-site surveillance police determined Martinez was a regular distributor of methamphetamine for an Ogden woman who received the drugs from a Phoenix man, who got them from Mexico.
Richards filed two motions Friday on behalf of Martinez. One asks that evidence obtained through the wiretaps be suppressed. The second motion asks that the charges be dismissed for violation of Martinez’s due process.
Both motions hinge on Johnson. Wiretaps require police meet a higher standard of probable cause than an average search warrant, including demonstrating to a judge that other investigative techniques have proven unsuccessful.
Richards contends that the only other thing Johnson did to investigate Martinez was to arrange for an informant to twice buy drugs from another defendant.
The informant has been unwilling to testify and the only evidence offered of the drug transactions is Johnson’s testimony from an April 2014 preliminary hearing for Martinez, who was ordered by a judge to stand trial.
Recorded conversations with that informant, which allegedly documented the drug purchases, were saved on Johnson’s phone and a computer at his home in Riverdale, according to Johnson’s testimony at the preliminary hearing.
Johnson, according to Richards’ motions, said those devices were destroyed in a fire at his Riverdale home Jan. 23, 2014.
But Richards said a private investigator’s report and photographs from the fire shows no property within the home was destroyed; the house only sustained some smoke and water damage, and some insulation fell from the ceiling.
Richards also says there is evidence that Johnson set the fire. The fire started when clothes were left against an open furnace, according to the private investigator’s review of a report by fire investigators. Johnson’s family was not at home at the time and neighbors told the investigator they saw Johnson run from the home and drive away as the neighbors were already starting to smell smoke.
Richards also accuses Johnson of lying in the wiretap application about the defendants’ roles in Ogden Trece. In an interview Tuesday, prosecutors stipulated that neither Martinez nor his co-defendants belong to Ogden Trece, Richards said.
Richards said the wiretap warrant that netted charges against Martinez led to more suspects, and the strike force used information stemming from the Martinez case to obtain additional wiretap warrants.
The strike force “wouldn’t have gotten that 20th or 30th wiretap if they hadn’t gotten the original one,” Richards said Tuesday.
Richards represents two other defendants netted with later wiretap warrants. Johnson was not the strike force agent who obtained those warrants, but Richards said he anticipates filing similar suppression motions in those two cases.
Neither motion filed Friday discusses the criminal charges against Johnson. Richards said the motions were written before Johnson was charged.
“I’m certainly going to bring it up when we have a hearing,” Richards said.
An attorney for Johnson did not return messages seeking comment Tuesday.
In the criminal case filed against Johnson, court documents sayhe contacted a confidential informant who previously helped him on 15 drug stings and asked her to arrange to purchase the painkiller Oxycodone in May 2014 and again on July 5. But in those two cases, court documents say, Johnson did not ask the woman to fill out the police paperwork she completed in previous cases.
It is not clear if the confidential informant in the criminal case against Johnson is the same one used against Martinez and his co-defendants.
A summons has been issued ordering Johnson, 29, to appear in 2nd District Court in Ogden on March 4 before Judge W. Brent West.
Johnson — who resigned from the Ogden police department Jan. 15 — has not been charged with crimes related to the fire at his home.
Twitter: @natecarlisle
http://www.sltrib.com/news/2135493-155/defense-attorney-claims-former-utah-cop?fullpage=1
POS cop
and POS drug laws