Informant tells jury he hired officer to escort drugs

LITTLE ROCK — A career drug dealer now living in Memphis spent most of Tuesday describing for jurors in a Little Rock federal courtroom the enormity and pervasiveness of public corruption in and around Helena-West Helena, where he grew up.

Cornelious Coleman, 35, whom an FBI agent described as a true “player,” revealed a seedy world of drug deals, thefts and payoffs that blatantly thrived alongside official business.

Jurors watched on video as the charismatic Coleman used a unique blend of charm and street smarts to engage a veteran police officer, Lt. Marlene Kalb, in secretly recorded conversations — some by telephone, others in person — in 2011. The video and Coleman’s testimony came on the second day of Kalb’s trial on extortion, drug and money-laundering charges.

FBI agents and federal prosecutors say the easygoing, long-winded conversations were sprinkled with coded references to their real purpose: having Kalb provide police protection for Coleman’s drug transports through the city in exchange for $500 cash payments.

But Kalb’s defense attorney, John Wesley Hall of Little Rock, contends that Coleman was instead fooling FBI agents, whom he wanted to keep paying him to be an informant.

Hall said Coleman’s slangladen remarks were deliberately ambiguous so that Kalb would interpret them as jokes while agents believed otherwise. He also said that Kalb, who was filmed taking a wad of cash from Coleman, believed that Coleman was giving it to her so that she could deliver it to a mutual friend she saw regularly.

Kalb, 49, is charged with extortion, attempting to possess cocaine with intent to distribute and money laundering. She is the only one of five law enforcement off icers indicted in an October 2011 sweep known as Operation Delta Blues to take her case to trial.

The charges focus on two meetings — on Sept. 9, 2011, and Sept. 26, 2011 — between Kalb and Coleman, whose mother is a longtime friend of Kalb and other police officers.

Prosecutors say that Kalb agreed to “escort” Coleman through the city, believing he was carrying drugs, to protect him from being stopped by other officers and that he paid her $500 cash after reaching the edge of the city both times.

Hall suggested Tuesday that Coleman’s real reason for asking Kalb to follow him was to prevent him from being caught driving on a suspended driver’s license, which could result in his arrest.

Coleman said his mother regularly invited local law enforcement officers — “both good and bad” — to a giant Sunday dinner at her house, located in “the heart of the ’hood.”

Under questioning, he acknowledged having “six or seven” prior felony convictions, including arson for setting an ex-girlfriend’s house on fire and armed robbery. He said he has served only one five-year stint in prison.

He is also currently serving a probation-only sentence for a robbery charge as well as a forgery charge related to cashing a counterfeit $9,600 check after his undercover work in the FBI-led corruption and drug-trafficking investigation.

A charge of grand larceny is also pending against him in Mississippi, he said.

Coleman testified that he has transported cocaine, and sometimes marijuana, into Arkansas from other states since he was 17 and that he has never had a “real job.” He made an average of $30,000 to $40,000 a month, he said, using the money for gambling and for indulgences such as treating “dolls,” referring to girlfriends, buying himself motorcycles and other vehicles, and remodeling his mother’s house.

He bragged that once, while in his mother’s kitchen, “I made $30,000 in 45 minutes.”

When his mother expressed concern, he reassured her, “It’s my job. I sell drugs,” he testified.

Off icers occasionally pulled him over and seized his drugs, “but nothing ever came of it,” he said.

Asked why not, he said the drugs that were seized “disappeared, like they always did.”

Coleman expressed particular dislike for Winston Dean Jackson, a former officer who is in federal prison after pleading guilty in the Delta Blues investigation. Jackson once stopped him and stole his load of drugs, he said, except for a pound that he deliberately left behind to make sure Coleman would be charged.

Coleman said he once even paid Jackson’s “light bill” for him in compensation for getting “a pass” from him on a serious drug charge.

Coleman also alleged that he had once paid Phillips County Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Todd Murray in exchange for assistance with a drug arrest.

“Todd Murray ended up getting $30,000 under the table in cashier’s checks on that deal,” Coleman told jurors.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Gordon, who is prosecuting the case with Assistant U.S. Attorney Julie Peters, asked Coleman if others involved in the drug arrest gave money to officials and “paid their way out of charges.”

“Yeah,” Coleman replied.

Reached by phone Tuesday evening, Murray said Coleman’s claim was baseless and a “bald-faced lie.”

“That is absolutely ridiculous. I have never taken any money from Cornelious Coleman or any other criminal,” Murray said.

He said his only interactions with Coleman came when he prosecuted him for various crimes. A part-time prosecutor in Helena-West Helena for nearly 20 years, Murray also said he didn’t recall the arrest that Coleman described in court.

“All I can tell you is it’s ridiculous. If I had any stronger language to attach to it I would put it that way. It’s a bald-faced lie. I don’t know why he would have any motivation to say that against me other than I prosecuted him in the past. It’s just ludicrous,” Murray said.

In testimony Monday, a federal agent disclosed that Coleman had secretly recorded Phillips County Sheriff Ronnie White and a jail administrator as part of the FBI’s public corruption investigation.

In total, Coleman made recordings of conversations with 10 public officials, FBI Special Agent Ward Seale testified in the first day of Kalb’s trial.

The agent didn’t elaborate on the nature of the recordings involving White and the jail administrator but testified that the recordings later made it unsafe for Coleman to be housed in the Phillips County jail, prompting the FBI to intervene and have him housed in another jail.

Murray, White and the unnamed jail administrator haven’t been charged with any crimes related to the investigation.

In other testimony Tuesday, Seale revealed that Coleman was also involved in the FBI’s investigation into Herman Eaton, another police officer who took a plea bargain.

Hall asked Seale about Coleman’s role in investigating Eaton, who is Coleman’s uncle.

“So Mr. Coleman helped convict his own uncle?,” Hall asked.

“Yes, sir. He did,” Seale replied.

Coleman also testified that he was involved in the investigation into his uncle but his testimony centered largely on his version of two meetings with Kalb.

In an FBI-recorded phone call arranging the second instance in which Kalb is accused of providing Coleman with a police escort through the city, jurors heard Kalb telling the informant she would be less restricted during the escort because she was off work.

“When you come through Monday, it’ll be just fine. ... When I’m off work, I have a lot more freedom,” she said, adding later: “It’ll probably be even better — I can go a little farther if you need me to.”