Jury finds drug defendant guilty
A jury deliberated just over an hour Tuesday before finding a 32-year-old Butler man guilty of drug charges in a case that relied on shaky footage and a drug-dealer-turned informant.
“Is this the system that we're in, that a drug dealer is the smoking gun?” defense attorney Komron Jon Maknoon asked the jury before the guilty verdict. “You're going to hang your hat of conviction on (a confidential informant)?”
State police arrested Thomas W. Stevenson Jr. in July 2017 and charged him with possession of a controlled substance, drug paraphernalia and possession with intent to deliver. The arrest was made after police employed a confidential informant to buy heroin from Stevenson in 2015. According to District Attorney Richard Goldinger, Stevenson will be sentenced in March and faces 21 to 27 months in prison.
Trooper Michael Lewis explained police did “a turn and burn” on the confidential informant. Lewis described the process as arresting a minor drug dealer with the intention of turning them into a confidential informant.
“We'll grow beards, long hair and dress dirty to blend in with the criminal aspect,” Lewis said. “But drug dealers on the higher end are a little smarter than a junkie. We can't make that introduction without them.”
And that's just what Lewis did with the confidential informant in 2015. The informant was arrested for dealing drugs to an undercover officer. The informant was offered a deal: work for the police and get a reduced sentence. The informant took the deal and two felony drug charges were dropped. The informant pleaded guilty in 2018 to two misdemeanor drug charges.
“When I got busted, I signed a lot of papers,” the informant said during the trial. “I signed my life away.”
Lewis explained the informant's value to the jury.
“There were certain people (the confidential informant) was involved with (who) I wanted to take down,” Lewis said.
One of them was Stevenson. Working for the police, the informant bought more than $200 worth of heroin from Stevenson. A camera attached to the informant's key-chain recorded the meeting outside a Chestnut Street apartment.
The video was viewed by the jury, however the footage was shaky and jurors had to watch the video several times, including a special request to view the video again during deliberations.
Stevenson remained quiet during the trial. He did not take the stand in his own defense.
The informant still faces two retail thefts, a crime to which (the informant) pleaded multiple times in past cases. Maknoon said the informant's past was filled with “crimes of dishonesty” and suggested to the jury that the informant's testimony was worthless.
“You've got (the confidential informant) here, and I'm not trying to be argumentative, who's worth zero. I ask you for a verdict of not guilty,” Maknoon said in his closing argument.
Goldinger responded to Maknoon's argument by telling jurors “Don't buy into the character assassination. Is (the confidential informant) a perfect person? No. But (the informant is) the exact type of person police use.”
