Former Little Rock police officer Randall Tremayn Robinson was acquitted Wednesday of four charges of knowingly helping another officer -- his half brother -- transport an illegal shipment of marijuana across the city in 2012.

The same federal jury that acquitted Robinson on those charges, however, convicted him on a single charge of lying to FBI agents who interviewed him about the transport, which was actually an FBI-orchestrated sting operation.

The lying charge was added this year, after Robinson's first trial last summer resulted in a different jury becoming hopelessly deadlocked about his participation in the transport. That jury convicted him on a single, unrelated charge of selling a half-pound of marijuana to a confidential informant in 2009.

When Robinson is sentenced at a later date on the charges of lying to the FBI and selling marijuana, he faces up to five years in prison but is also eligible for probation in lieu of prison time.

Had he been convicted of the four charges related to the transport, he would have faced at least five years and as much as 40 years in prison. Considering the breadth and number of the charges, he would have most likely received "considerably more" than five years, defense attorney Lee Short said.

Throughout both trials, defense attorney Bill James maintained that although Robinson clearly participated in the transport, he may have been an unwitting participant in committing a crime. The line of argument is that despite evidence that Robinson used his police vehicle to follow a van that was said to be loaded with marijuana, there was no proof that he was ever told the van contained marijuana.

James said it was possible that Robinson's older half brother, Mark Anthony Jones, used his authority as a senior officer to order Robinson to follow the van without telling him why.

James pointed out that while FBI surveillance photos showed Jones accepting $10,000 in cash in two shrink-wrapped bundles from a known drug dealer who was secretly cooperating with the FBI, there were never any photographs showing Jones giving any of the money to Robinson.

The closest that Assistant U.S. Attorneys Anne Gardner and Pat Harris came to proving that Robinson received any of the money was surveillance photographs of the half brothers sitting together for a short time inside a vehicle outside a police substation about 15 minutes after the informant gave the bundles of cash to Jones on March 22, 2012.

That morning, the two half brothers, both in uniform and driving marked patrol vehicles, were monitored by air and ground surveillance as the FBI sting operation unfolded near Colonel Glenn and Shackleford roads.

Jones, who pleaded guilty last year instead of going to trial, has acknowledged arranging to be on standby in his patrol car shortly after boxes reportedly containing marijuana were unloaded from a tractor-trailer rig parked nearby and put into two white vans.

The cooperating witness, Brandon Hill, told him the rig had just arrived from California, but it was actually driven by FBI agents, and most of the boxes that Jones saw loaded into the vans were empty or filled with packing material. Agents had inserted a small amount of marijuana in some of the boxes to justify a charge of conspiring to aid and abet the possession with intent to distribute marijuana.

Both officers were kept under FBI surveillance as they each followed one of the vans to separate storage facilities.

In an interview with FBI agents after the officers' arrests, Robinson denied following a van; knowing that Hill or James had asked him to follow a van; ever having one of two "drop phones" that Hill said he gave Jones for both half brothers to use during the escort; and receiving money for following the van.

Neither Robinson nor Jones testified at trial, but Jones said during his own plea hearing that Robinson agreed to help him escort an illegal drug shipment.

"Jones was not willing to testify against his brother -- although I don't know how much you could have believed if he did testify," defense attorney Short said Wednesday after the verdict. He said the case has "definitely been hard" on the half brothers' relationship, and, "as far as I know, they're not on speaking terms."

Short said Robinson was "very glad" he went to trial. "He always said he was innocent, and he knew the risk."

Robinson, a father with young children who also coaches youth basketball, remains free until sentencing.

Meanwhile, Short said the defense team plans to challenge both convictions. An officer whose testimony last year led to the marijuana conviction has since been charged himself with dishonesty related to undercover drug buys.

Short said he was grateful to jurors for paying "close attention" to the evidence.

Metro on 06/19/2014