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DEPUTY CONSTABLE SOLD MARIJUANA, DPS SERGEANT TESTIFIES

Former McLennan County Deputy Constable Kevin Scott Baker sold marijuana to a police informant at a Bellmead motel in January, a Texas Department of Public Safety sergeant testified Wednesday. 

Baker, 38, is on trial in Waco's federal court on charges of distribution of less than 50 kilograms of marijuana, conspiracy to distribute marijuana and aiding and abetting the distribution of marijuana. 

Assistant U.S.  Attorney Mark Frazier told the jury of seven women and five men in opening statements Wednesday that he is forced to build his case against Baker on circumstantial, indirect evidence because the police informant, a drug user with a long criminal history, died in June from complications from hepatitis C. 

"The sad truth is that the defendant is a cop, a law enforcement officer, and he sold marijuana for personal gain," Frazier said. 

Baker's attorney, Phil Martinez, told jurors that Baker and the informant, Martha Jo Mahall, were introduced through a mutual friend, adding that Baker had agreed to loan Mahall $200 because she said she really needed the money. 

As collateral for the loan, Mahall let Baker hold the title to her 1989 van until she could repay the debt, Martinez said.  However, before she could repay the loan, Mahall got stopped in the van in Comanche County and was arrested for possession of crack cocaine. 

After she got out of jail, she merely met Baker at the Bellmead motel to repay the money she owed him, Martinez said, adding that Baker had no marijuana with him when he met her at the motel. 

"What better way for someone hooked on crack cocaine to get herself out of trouble than to say she knows a police officer who deals drugs?" Martinez asked the jury.  "It was an elaborate lie she got herself into."

DPS Sgt.  Ricky Feist of Lampasas said he began his investigation of Baker after he met with Mahall on a routine follow-up interview after her arrest in Comanche County on Jan.  23.  She told him that she knew a man named "Kevin" who was a "law enforcement officer" in Waco who reportedly had sold her and her friends marijuana, Feist said. 

Before he launched the full-scale undercover investigation, Feist got Mahall to call Baker on his cell phone to try to arrange drug buy.  Prosecutors played a tape of that conversation, in which Mahall said she would trade her van for some "weed," and subsequent phone conversations between the pair for the jury on Wednesday. 

On one tape, Baker cautioned Mahall about speaking so freely about drug deals because he was talking on a cell phone and was afraid the call might be monitored. 

Feist said they set Mahall up in room 106 of the Delta Inn in Bellmead to try to make the buy.  With police video and audio surveillance in place, Baker drove up to the motel on Jan.  30 in a white Crown Victoria equipped with emergency lights that he used as a Precinct 8 deputy constable, Feist said.  He sold Mahall $50 worth of marijuana while collecting $150 she owed him from a previous drug deal, Feist said. 

Mahall came out of the motel room with a plastic bag with marijuana in it, the sergeant said. 

Baker worked part-time for Precinct 8 Constable Felix Suarez since December 2002.  He also worked as a truck driver. 

Prosecution testimony resumes this morning.