Pubdate: Sat, 28 Oct 2000
Source: San Marcos Daily Record (TX)
Copyright: 2000 San Marcos Daily Record
Contact:  1910 IH35 South, San Marcos TX 78666
Fax: 512-392-1514
Website: http://www.sanmarcosrecord.com/
Author: MURLIN EVANS - Staff Reporter

DRUG TASK FORCE QUESTIONS REMAIN

Few Believe Murray Lee Dyer's Case Will Ever Come To Trial.

Like most of the felony drug charges filed after a spring 1999 Hays County 
Narcotics Task Force sting in Wimberley, Dyer's case will likely be 
dropped, local defense attorneys say.

Why? Because integral to the case is the testimony of Roy Parrish, a 
48-year-old habitual felon and ex-con who, witnesses say, peddled pills, 
alcohol and marijuana to area teens and adults to make friends and 
eventually persuade them to sell him dope.

The problem is, Parrish wasn't one of the defendants arrested in the sting; 
he was working as an informant for the police.

"There were 16, 17-year-old girls he was giving pills and marijuana," said 
San Marcos defense attorney David Morris, who represented two 
felony-charged defendants after the bust. Both felonies were dismissed. 
"When you have an informant out there on the street actually contributing 
alcohol and drugs to minors, it goes way beyond law enforcement."

Whether dismissed or tried, Dyer's case will likely be the punctuation 
mark, the final chapter of a story with more twists than a clove hitch, and 
of an investigation local law enforcement officials would probably just as 
soon forget.

The four-month marijuana sting was marred from day one by the high-profile 
shooting death of 25-year-old Alexander "Rusty" Windle, who was killed on 
his front porch in Wimberley after leveling a rifle at warrant-serving Task 
Force agents in the pre-dawn hours of May 24, 1999.

Windle had twice reportedly delivered half ounce baggies of pot to Parrish 
- -- just enough to make the crime a state jail felony.

But the raid-style manner in which the warrants were served -- a Texas 
Rangers report presents conflicting testimony on as police -- was way 
overboard for the seriousness of the offenses and probably contributed to 
Windle's reaction and the violence that ensued, critics say.

After the sting, local defense attorneys banded together and uncovered 
dovetailing evidence on Parrish and his "questionable" behavior in the 
field, evidence most believe will keep him from ever taking the stand in 
Hays County.

Windle's case aside, of the 14 filed felonies resulting from the sting and 
tracked through district court, 10 were dismissed or reduced to 
misdemeanors by the district attorney's office. Three defendants pled 
guilty, mostly due to concurrent or pre-existing offenses and the last, 
Dyer's, is scheduled for jury trial next February.

The disposition of cases filed against two additional indicted defendants 
could not be retrieved from district court records.

The high number of dismissals and reduced charges were probably a 
disappointment given the time and manpower invested by the core 12-member 
Task Force unit, which includes five officers from the San Marcos Police 
Department, six from the Hays County Sheriff's Department and one federally 
funded agent from the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms.

Each department pays only for the salaries and equipment used by its 
officers, with operating expenses -- around $4,000 used in the Wimberley 
investigation -- coming from asset forfeitures from prior drug convictions 
awarded by a court of law.

It was this money, officials say, that was used to set up Parrish at the 
7-A Ranch Resort in Wimberley, supply him with money for drugs, and make 
him the life of the party.

"They gave him pills and drugs and money and sent him out to party," San 
Marcos defense attorney Billy McNaab said. "He was dishing out pills and 
narcotics to kids, our kids, and the people need to know about it."

The Daily Record independently confirmed similar allegations made by 
management at the 7-A Ranch Resort -- persons not arrested in the drug 
sting -- who say Parrish's cabin was party central on the high school 
circuit, and the source of numerous complaints by neighboring tenants.

Though officials maintain they have no "verifiable evidence" to back up 
these allegations, Task Force Commander Regis DeArza that because 
informants provide a vital link between the drug world and law enforcement, 
anything could have taken place.

"We're certainly not going to knowingly ply alcohol to a minor to get them 
to go do something, that's just not reality," DeArza said. "But in that 
kind of environment, it's plausible a minor could be drinking, smoking 
marijuana, using methamphetamine, cocaine, all those things could be taking 
place."

DeArza declined a follow up interview, but in a written statement, said 
informants were required to follow certain guidelines in the field, and 
that visual surveillance was "always" maintained when they purchase drugs.

While the allegations of Parrish's contributions to the delinquency of 
minors is discounted by law enforcement officials, other evidence 
supporting his "questionable" behavior in the field is more clear cut.

On April 22, 1999, about a month before Windle's death, Parrish embarked on 
a road trip unbeknownst to Hays County Detectives, when he was stopped for 
a traffic violation by a Gonzales County Sheriff's Deputy near Interstate 
10, a leaked Task Force memo reads.

A search of Parrish's vehicle turned up around four grams of pot -- a cache 
complete with a rolled joint, roach clip and rolling papers.

After informing Gonzales officials he was working as a confidential 
informant, and confirming it with a phone call, Hays  County Task Force 
officials negotiated his release.

The memo states Parrish unsuccessfully tried to contact Task Force 
officials about the contraband, but then drove straight past Task Force 
headquarters in San Marcos -- the route to I-10 from Wimberley -- on his 
way to a supposed doctor's appointment in Houston. His true destination is 
not known.

That situation, and knowledge of it by defense attorneys, put most of the 
indictments from the investigation on shaky ground, many agree.

"The DA ought to be protecting our children from slimebags like that, not 
sending them out into the community," local defense attorney David Sergi 
said. Sergi will represent Dyer if his case comes to trial. "Two wrongs 
don't make a right, but we're ready to go. Put him on the stand." Though 
the use of informants is by no means a new tactic in drug investigations, 
the pairing of such characters with law enforcement to set up drug busts 
has come under heavy fire in the past year.

Most notable perhaps, is the case of Andrew Chambers, an informant whom the 
Drug Enforcement Administration has paid over $2.2 million since 1984 for 
his work helping to imprison 475 people on drug charges, more than 50 in 
the Houston, Beaumont and Port Arthur area.

But in some 16 cases, Chambers was found to have lied on the stand about 
his arrest record, aliases, education and failure to pay income taxes on 
his DEA earnings, according to an Aug. 7, 2000 article in the Houston 
Chronicle.

At least a dozen people convicted on his testimony are now appealing their 
cases and prosecutors have dropped charges against14 others since Chambers 
was "deactivated" this February.

But according to Eric Sterling, president of the Criminal Justice Policy 
Foundation in Washington, DC, Chambers is a fundamentally different type of 
informant than Parrish.

Chambers, despite his blunders, was a professional informant, who earned a 
living setting up dealers. Parrish was essentially a felon looking to get 
out of hard jail time -- a more feasible investigative tool for rural law 
enforcement agencies without DEA or big city crime prevention budgets.

Sterling, a top level crime and drug policy analyst who helped develop the 
Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984 and the Drug Abuse Acts of 1986, 
said use of informants in general has steadily increased since 1980, along 
with drug  enforcement overall. More than 1.5 million people have been 
arrested on drug charges annually in the United States for the last four 
years, Sterling said, compared to around 700,000 annual arrests for violent 
criminal offense during the same period.

Though the use of professional informants has its caveats, putting 
criminals facing hard time in law enforcement positions is a recipe for 
disaster, some contend.

"In those situations, the people who are making the decisions about who 
gets investigated, prosecuted and imprisoned are often criminal defendants 
facing stiff penalties. They're less sophisticated than professional 
informants," Sterling said. "That kind of situation is rife for abuse 
because they're often devoid of good judgment and character."

Pointing to informant-driven investigations in scores of U.S. cities where 
inaccurate or outright wrong information has led  to Task Force shooting 
deaths of innocent people, Sterling said witness credibility should be of 
paramount concern.

"With informants we've got governments bringing together the informant and 
the arresting officer together for the commission of the crime," Sterling 
said. "It's a complete turnaround from traditional law enforcement."

Often facing drug charges themselves, informants sign on with law 
enforcement entities to provide an important service, drug enforcement 
officials contend -- an inside view on an often dangerous world police 
would not be able to penetrate  through traditional means.

Depending on the quality of their information, informants may be given 
reward money from asset forfeiture funds, or may negotiate for lighter 
sentences, though the agreement reached between Parrish and Hays County 
officials is not available. "People don't grow up to be confidential 
informants," McNaab said. "They used him because he's a felon and he did it 
for the money and to get himself out of trouble."

Though a number of misdemeanor convictions came out of the Wimberley sting, 
most resulting in probated sentences, Hays County is hardly lacking for 
enforcement of such low level drug offenses.

According to The Texas Judicial Council -- a statewide tracking agency for 
county and district court cases -- some 2,000  misdemeanor drug charges 
were filed through the county court system here over the past five years 
from 1994 to 1999, around 450 cases per year.

And the county wasn't doing too badly with felony drug arrests either.

During that same period some 469 indictments for drug possession were 
handed down and 97 indictments for drug sale or manufacture.

Though the Task Force was reformed under newly elected Hays County Sheriff 
Don Montague and San Marcos Police  Chief Steve Griffith in 1998 after a 
similar unit disbanding in 1994, its work during its first year yielded 
minimal results. The Wimberley investigation in 1999 was the first of its 
kind for the new Task Force.

Montague, who is up for re-election this year, did not return numerous 
phone calls requesting interviews for this article, nor did he respond to a 
faxed list of questions regarding possible policy reforms relating to the 
use of informants in Hays County.

Hays County Assistant District Attorney Cathy Compton however, backed Task 
Force Commander DeArza in discounting  the allegations made against 
Parrish, though no investigation into them was conducted by her office.

Though Compton acknowledged "it is a fine line" involving informants in 
criminal activity for law enforcement purposes, she said she had confidence 
the policies in place had little room for improvement.

"There's no need for any reform in the way we use informants," Compton 
said. "I'm perfectly satisfied with the procedures  we have. Ninety-nine 
point nine percent of these allegations are completely unfounded...and we 
don't have the resources to follow up on every allegation made in these cases."

Compton said she was aware Parrish had been involved in a traffic stop in 
Gonzales County while working for the task  force, but refused to comment 
on the incident.

Defense attorneys say they've seen no change in the Task Force's use of 
confidential informants.

Some, like local attorney Norman Lanford -- who spent 13 years as a deputy 
sheriff in Harris County and 12 years as a criminal court district judge -- 
say the overall risks to private citizens by continuing such operations far 
outweigh any perceived gains made in the war on drugs.

"They should have treated it (Wimberley sting) like a training exercise, 
dropped the cases and looked at what they did right and what they did 
wrong," Lanford said. "It's not worth putting anyone at peril, not for 
these minuscule amounts of dope."
- ---
MAP posted-by: Keith Brilhart