When state police pulled over a car-hauling tractor-trailer rig on Interstate 40 in Pope County on Feb. 26, 2014, for swerving, something about a white 2001 Honda Accord in the back of the trailer immediately caught the trooper's attention.
The driver of the rig gave permission to search the vehicle, and police found three cellophane-wrapped bundles of cash totaling $328,910 hidden in a false compartment behind the back seat.
Police seized the cash, saying it was no doubt "drug money" because traces of cocaine and heroin were found throughout the car and a drug dog later "alerted" on the cash when it was placed under a flipped-over five-gallon bucket at the Pope County sheriff's office. But a disabled Vietnam veteran in Little Rock to whom the car was registered contends it and the cash were stolen from him. He said the cash represents his life savings, and he wants it back.
On Monday, U.S. District Judge Kristine Baker presided over a nonjury trial on the matter, taking "under advisement" the government's request that the money be officially forfeited to it. Baker is expected to issue a written ruling after reviewing documents and testimony.
Complicating the matter is the fact the registered owner of the Honda, Willie Earnest Lee, 65, suffers from mental illness, according to defense attorney John Wesley Hall Jr., and didn't attend the trial, although a court-appointed guardian attended on his behalf. Hall says Lee's whereabouts are unknown.
Hall also says that on the day of the traffic stop, which was the same day the driver said he met a man in a Walmart parking lot on Baseline Road to load the car to be shipped to California, Lee was either in jail or in the State Hospital, where records show he has been admitted repeatedly over the course of more than 20 years.
State Police Sgt. Chris Goodman, who at the time of the traffic stop was a corporal, testified Monday that the Accord's plates were registered to Lee and Andrew Jordan of Little Rock. He said a bill of lading given to him by the truck driver identified the shipper only as "Howard" and said the car was being shipped to "Dewitt and Nina Smith" in Los Angeles, though "Howard" couldn't be reached through the phone number listed, and a man who answered the phone number given for the recipients said his name was Dewitt but his last name wasn't Smith and he didn't know a Nina Smith. He also said he wasn't expecting a vehicle to be delivered to him.
Video watched in Baker's courtroom showed Goodman and another trooper searching the vehicle at night with blue lights flashing, and eventually pulling out the false compartment.
Another video recorded by Goodman's car showed him visiting the Little Rock address listed on the car's registration on March 9, 2014, only to be told by a woman who said she was Lee's niece that he was "old and frail" and had been in and out of the State Hospital for 20 years, but that she had never heard of Jordan.
The case started out in state court but was later transferred to federal court because of the significant amount of money involved and the Drug Enforcement Administration's more extensive resources to investigate.
In challenging the government's effort to have the money forfeited to it, Lee, who suffers from schizoaffective disorder, and his guardians say it was his disability money that he had been saving since the late 1970s.
Charles Pittman, a financial investigator with the DEA, testified Monday that he subpoenaed records from the Social Security Administration showing that Lee had received a total of $257,407.20 in disability payments from June 1977 until January 2014 -- $71,502.80 less than the total amount of cash found in the car.
During that time, Pittman said, Lee didn't file any tax returns, at least during a six-year period that was checked, and no other source of income for him was determined. He said Lee was, however, known to have a serious drug and alcohol habit.
Lee likely would have had expenses such as rent and regular living expenses, Pittman testified, noting that his disability payments were direct-deposited into his bank account, and that some of it was withdrawn.
Discharge records from the State Hospital in 1982 and 1983 show that Lee was on medication and, as a result, wasn't supposed to drive, Pittman testified. The investigator said a sister of Lee's reported that he was often homeless when not in jail or in the State Hospital.
Detective Mike Welborn of the Little Rock Police Department testified that he researched insurance records for the Accord, finding that Jordan, who also used the name John Garner, had been issued driver's licenses in California, was once married to a niece of Lee's and was indicted in the past year in the Eastern District of Arkansas on drug and weapons charges along with two other men.
Welborn said he also found invoices showing work was done on the Accord as recently as Aug. 13, 2013 and that new tires were installed on it on Sept. 4, 2013.
Assistant U.S. attorneys Cameron McCree and Jamie Goss Dempsey said Garner was arrested on March 4, 2014, less than a week after the seizure of the cash, under the alias Peter Morris, after law enforcement authorities in California learned from a "high-level confidential source" that Garner was trying to arrange a shipment of 10 kilograms of cocaine to Little Rock. Garner is currently facing drug and gun charges in the Eastern District of Arkansas stemming from conduct in 2017 and 2018, they said.
The prosecutors say Garner had access to the Accord but that no one recalls Lee ever using it.
Metro on 10/23/2018