A federal jury convicted Demetrius Colbert on Friday of all six felony charges he faced, including cocaine distribution and shooting an FBI agent.
The main allegation against Colbert, 38, was that he distributed more than 5 kilograms of cocaine in the Marianna area from January 2010 through October 2011, selling large quantities to other drug dealers for distribution on the streets. A kilogram equals 2.2 pounds and sells for $31,000, according to testimony.
Other drug dealers testified that they typically bought 4½ to 9 ounces at a time from Colbert, with one saying he made several such purchases each week.
The other major allegation against Colbert was that he fired eight rounds from a .40-caliber handgun at FBI agents who conducted a pre-dawn raid at his home on Oct. 11, 2011, causing one of the bullets to pierce the thigh of an FBI agent from Virginia.
Colbert, considered one of four major drug dealers in Lee and Phillips counties at the time of his 2011 arrest, faces extensive prison time, and the amount of drugs he dealt will be a factor in U.S. District Judge James M. Moody Jr.'s sentencing decision at a later date.
Testimony during the five-day trial indicated that Colbert had sold 7½ kilograms of the drug to just one of his cocaine customers.
That customer, Leon Edwards, 36, is serving a 22-year sentence that could be reduced by up to half in exchange for his testimony. Edwards and Sedrick Trice, who is serving 40 years in the case but didn't testify, were identified by U.S. Attorney Chris Thyer as the top two drug dealers in what was called Operation Delta Blues. The fourth person considered a top dealer was Torrence Turner, now 39, who is serving a 30-year sentence on a negotiated guilty plea.
The jury of five women and seven men deliberated less than hour before returning its guilty verdicts on charges of conspiracy to possess with intent to deliver more than 5 kilograms of cocaine, two counts of using a telephone to facilitate a drug-trafficking conspiracy, being a felon in possession of a firearm, assaulting a federal officer with a deadly weapon, and discharging a firearm in furtherance of a drug-trafficking conspiracy.
FBI Agent Wendell Cosenza, who later underwent surgery to remove bullet fragments, was part of a special weapons and tactics team sent to Arkansas to accompany about 700 other law enforcement officers who simultaneously served warrants in the state's Delta as part of the FBI-led Operation Delta Blues investigation. The warrants stemmed from seven sealed indictments naming 71 defendants that a federal grand jury in Little Rock had handed up a week earlier.
Colbert didn't testify, but defense attorney Mark Hampton of Little Rock maintained that Colbert was merely acting in self-defense and in defense of his wife and two young children when he fired shots from a handgun he kept on a dresser in his bedroom at intruders he didn't realize were law enforcement officers.
In closing arguments Friday morning, Assistant U.S. Attorney Benecia Moore countered that "he was using the gun to protect his drugs and the proceeds from his product" or to slow the agents' entry into the house until he could flush his supply of cocaine down the toilet.
A witness from the state Crime Laboratory testified earlier in the week that he found cocaine residue on the rim of the toilet bowl and on a large plastic bag found stuffed in the toilet tank.
Colbert's wife, Catina Davis, testified Thursday that the family was asleep when the raid began about 4 a.m. and that she never heard Cosenza bang on the door three times and call out "FBI!"
To that, Moore told jurors Friday that all they had to do was look at photographs of the heavy wood door to see three indentations left by the pounding of Cosenza's baton. She said Cosenza knocked and announced the FBI's presence immediately after two police vehicles parked in the driveway, in front of a large picture window, flipped on their blue lights.
After 30 to 45 seconds passed without a response from inside the house, she said, Cosenza tried the doorknob, which was locked. Then he and another agent swung a battering ram to force the door open. But before the door was breached, Moore said, at least one shot was fired from inside the house.
Moore said that although there were different recollections about the precise order in which all the events unfolded, that last fact was indisputable -- as evidenced by a bullet hole that was fired through the closed door from the inside.
In the ensuing gunfire from both inside and outside the house -- an FBI firearms expert said five shots were fired into the house by law enforcement officers outside -- Moore said the door opened and another SWAT team member tossed a flash-bang device into the house while officers retreated.
Officers, uncertain whether Davis and the two children were in the house but believing they probably weren't, then yelled for anyone inside to come outside with their hands up, they testified. They said Davis emerged first, followed a minute or so later by Colbert, before agents went inside and took the children out.
Davis testified that the children were asleep in the bedroom next to the front door, lying on a trundle bed beside a larger bed, and that she ran into their room and threw her body on top of theirs to protect them from the gunfire -- at first believing her son had been hit, though he wasn't.
Agent Rich Bollinger, who was part of the SWAT team, testified earlier in the week that one of his assignments was to keep an eye on two side-by-side windows of the room next to the front door, which he didn't know was the children's room.
As he watched the window from outside the house, he said, he saw the curtains moving and a hand waving a black gun. He said he fired his machine gun in the direction of the hand, his bullets piercing the upper part of the window.
In closing arguments, Hampton showed jurors a photograph taken later, during daylight, of the children's bed, which had a tall mattress and was in the middle of the room. He told jurors that if they looked at the trajectory of the bullets fired from outside, they would see that at least one shot entered through the lower part of the window, which could have killed the children if they had been on the bed.
Hampton said the couple's previous homes had been burglarized four times, which is why Colbert kept a handgun even though he was a convicted felon and wasn't legally allowed to have a gun.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Julie Peters challenged that assertion in her rebuttal argument, playing a recorded FBI-intercepted telephone call between the couple after Davis discovered someone had climbed through her daughter's bedroom window in another home and stolen a television.
In the call, Davis excitedly relayed the break-in to Colbert and admonished him to "come get this s*** out of here" to prevent the thieves from returning. Colbert calmly listened and then, as other intercepted calls revealed, went back to making drug transactions with other callers.
"He sounds really worried about them breaking in," Peters said sarcastically.
Although Davis never specifically identified what items she wanted Colbert to take out of the house, prosecutors have implied she was referring to drugs, drug proceeds and expensive jewelry, all of which police said they found in the Marianna house after the raid. The cash, some in shrink-wrapped bundles, amounted to $423,000, FBI agents testified.
After his conviction about noon Friday, Colbert didn't contest the government's efforts to seize the cash and jewelry.
Colbert was the only one of the four men identified as drug kingpins to go to trial. Only two defendants in the seven cases under the Delta Blues umbrella have yet to be adjudicated. One, Milton "Bump" Johnson of Helena-West Helena, remains a fugitive. The other, Mervyn Hamilton, also of Helena-West Helena, is set for trial in July.
