A Pulaski County circuit judge on Monday ordered authorities to return $28,630 seized during a homicide investigation to the 37-year-old North Little Rock man it was taken from.
After a 45-minute hearing, Judge Mackie Pierce sided with defense attorney Patrick Benca, who argued that sheriff’s deputies had no grounds to take the money from Anthony Tyrone Davis during a June 2011 traffic stop.
According to testimony and court records, Davis, Herman Jefferson and Jonathan Wright were under surveillance as part of an investigation into the April 2011 slaying of David Tidwell, who was shot dead athis Slinker Road home south of Sweet Home.
The 37-year-old Tidwell was a drug dealer who had testified for federal prosecutors four years earlier in the the trial of Vertis Clay, who was convicted in 2007 for participating in the 2003 torture and murder of Darryl Johnson, a 38-year-old Pine Bluff man who was part of a ring that distributed marijuana shipments from Mexico. Clay, 44, of North Little Rock, was sentenced to life in prison after jurors rejected the death penalty.
Court filings show that Tidwell’s testimony was also used in the sentencing of two other men: Calvin Stovall was sentenced to life in prison in 2008 on federal marijuana-trafficking charges, and Darrell Walker was sentenced to 24 years for participating in Johnson’s torture and slaying. Authorities said Stovall ordered Johnson’s slaying.
No one has ever been charged in Tidwell’s death.
As part of the inquiry into Tidwell’s slaying, sheriff’s investigator Marco Medina told Pierce that he had been assigned to watch for Davis at a unnamed barbershop on Washington Avenue in Little Rock, a business Davis was known to frequent. Medina said he saw Davis get into a vehicle near the location and followed the vehicle until it pulled into a Citgo convenience store at East Broadway and Pine, where he saw a second vehicle pull up next to Davis, driver’s window to driver’s window. Medina described the encounter as “suspicious activity.”
Davis’ car, a sport utility vehicle, was subsequently stopped after a deputy reported seeing Davis turn onto East Washington Avenue from Pine Street without using his turn signal. A background check showed Davis had a “lengthy history” of arrests for drugs, court filings show, so the police brought a drug dog to examine the car. The dog reacted to the driver’s side, according to records and testimony.
A search of the vehicle turned up a loaded .40-caliber pistol, 10-round clip, a backpack containing $26,510 and a .40-caliber magazine, while Davis had $2,120 on his person, court records show. Deputy prosecutor Jason Ables noted that the backpack contained 141 $100 bills. Authorities seized the money, claiming it was the proceeds of drug dealing.
Benca argued at Monday’s hearing that authorities had no right to the money because there was no evidence the cash came from drug dealing. The drug dog’s “hit” on the vehicle could be attributed to the large quantity of money in the vehicle, since most currency is believed to be tainted by drugs, Benca said. There’s no evidence that Davis was doing anything wrong by parking his car next to another vehicle, he told the judge.
Pierce agreed, saying he could see himself stopping and talking to another driver in that manner.
“I don’t hear any testimony that there was a drug transaction,” the judge said. “I’ve got a real problem with that.”
At a February hearing infederal court, chicken-restaurant owner Quenton Edward King, 33, testified that Davis was his manager and the money was restaurant proceeds that Davis was taking to be deposited in the bank.
Davis was arrested during the traffic stop on a felon in possession of a firearm charge, and he was indicted in October 2011 on federal gun and ammunition possession charges. His March trial ended with a hung jury, but last week, he pleaded no contest to the ammunition charge and is free awaiting sentencing.
Court filings show that when he was 18, Davis, his brother Vida Lamont Davis, then 17, and a third teenage suspect were charged with capital murder over accusations they were involved in the October 1993 slaying and robbery of 18-year-old Jerry Williams at West 11th and Peyton streets in Little Rock. The charges were eventually dropped.
In Fort Myers, Fla., Davis was charged with murder in 1996, but the murder charge was dropped and he was subsequently convicted of drug dealing, court filings show.
Within a few months of Tidwell’s death, his girlfriend, 34-year-old Shernetta “Shay” Robinson, and William “Scotty” Hickman, 41, of Little Rock were indicted on federal drug-trafficking charges over accusations that they destroyed cocaine at the Slinker Road home that Robinson shared with Tidwell, impeding the investigation into his killing.
The charges were dropped against Robinson in December when she pleaded guilty to misprision of a felony for knowing about drug dealing at the home around the time of Tidwell’s slaying, and that she helped Hickman clean up drugs from her kitchen table and allowed Hickman to leave with drugs without telling authorities, court filings show. She is scheduled for sentencing May 30.
Hickman was convicted of drug possession at trial last month, with prosecutors subsequently dropping a charge of obstruction of evidence involving cocaine at the Slinker Road home after jurors could not decide on a verdict on that charge. His sentencing has not been scheduled.
Arkansas, Pages 9 on 04/30/2013