BENTON—Remember this photo?
This one. It ran last week.
Apparently that wasn’t right.
This is a photo of a test that ostensibly was run on a “powdery substance” being found in former Gallatin County sheriff Raymond Martin’s cell in Williamson County after he landed there in late October, pending a hearing in U.S. District Court originally set for November 29. That hearing didn’t go because of the multiple pills and powdery substance. This “powdery substance” field-tested positive for cocaine. That’s the photo above: the field test. Administered by the people in the federal holding section of the Williamson County Courthouse.
Yeah. That’s what we said.
As it turned out, this powdery substance is now being reported as being the insides of an anti-depressant pill that busted and was among the other pills Martin allegedly had (allegedly because really, this is a tough one; jail officials “shook down” his cell on Oct. 30 about 10 minutes after he arrived and magically “found” this stash of contraband)—NOT cocaine. The feds have advised that the field test read a false positive. Oops. Sorry Raymondo.
This is just the latest troublesome development in a series of troublesome developments that began when Martin’s appeal was approved by an appeals court in Chicago. The higher court ruled that his sentence was a little excessive (two life sentences for a “weapons in commission of a drug crime” conviction) and that he should be resentenced according to guidelines. According to what we’re learning, however, a different set of “guidelines” are going to be applied that are going to result in roughly the same sentence (maybe a couple of years shorter, but hey, life is life). This is set to go down on Friday of this week. And the feds are wanting to use this big drug stash found in Raymondo’s cell as reason to impose and even stiffer sentence…if one can be had. Maybe those two extra years or so. We probably won’t know until we get there.
But the drug find was indeed strange. Martin claims that the antidepressants came from other federal inmates that he “borrowed” prior to making his trip back to Illinois. At least he admitted to them. He probably should have kept them in whatever dank place he had them just a little longer than he did so the shakedown wouldn’t have revealed them…but hey, if the man’s on antidepressants, it would seem he had other concerns to deal with besides crevasse concealment.
So we don’t know what we’re going to hear Friday. It definitely should be interesting. And maybe we’ll hear an explanation of how that field test could have given an erroneous result…and how often such a thing has happened in OTHER cases across the country.