Final Tayloe Pharmacy case dismissed | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Publisher's Note: This article originally appeared in the Beaufort Observer.

    Nearly a year later, the Government's case in the Tayloe Pharmacy drug bust is over. Last week (4-11-13) the U. S. Attorney dismissed all of the felony charges against the final defendant, Amanda Bunch. Bunch agreed to plead guilty to a single misdemeanor count of failing to keep accurate records. She has not been sentenced on that charge yet.

    As we have previously reported, all of the defendants, except one, have seen their charges dismissed without a public explanation from the U. S. Attorney's Office. The one remaining case, that of Justin Mixon, was settled when Mixon pleaded guilty early on in the proceedings. It has been rumored that Mixon cut a deal with the government to plead guilty and testify against other defendants.

    The case has taken many unusual turns. The first came when Beaufort District Attorney Seth Edwards appeared to be sitting on the case. He refused to explain why he did not try the cases. As pressure built, he transferred the case to another District Attorney, and then somehow it ended up in Federal Court. But no one will explain why that happened.

    We did know that months after the arrests the SBI was still investigating. That led some to believe that Edwards lacked the evidence to take it to trial and the SBI was trying to find enough to prosecute. There are also rumors about why the case was apparently shifted from the initial SBI investigator to another agent. Again, that was not explained.

    But the most troubling cover-up came in January and March of this year. The Assistant U. S. Attorney, Jennifer Wells, dismissed the charges against four of the defendants, but not Bunch or Mixon, in what she said in court filings was "in light of new evidence." She still refuses to respond to questions about what "new evidence" came to light and more importantly, when that evidence came to be known and to whom it was known. This led to more rumors, this time about prosecutorial misconduct (withholding exculpatory evidence).

    So after much bluster and a year of trauma and expense dumped on these defendants, and an apparent railroad job on one of them, the government ends up with a paperwork misdemeanor plea.

    The links below are to earlier articles on the case:

    1-24-13 article

    Original report of indictments.

    Commentary

    We've said it before and we'll say it again here. This stinks. Our local DA has not made an adequate public explanation about how he handled the case. The public deserves to know why he did not try the case.

    The Lenoir County DA (the one Edwards said he referred the case to) has refused to explain why he did not try the case and bumped it to the Feds.

    And the Federal prosecutor refused to respond to queries about why she dismissed the cases, and has still left one defendant hanging out to dry while all the others go free.

    All that smells to high heaven.

    We'll leave it to you to decide who is to blame here. But as for us we think they are all to blame and should be held accountable for their actions.

    What it looks like to us is that the original case was trumped up by the Beaufort County Sheriff's Department (the original arresting agency). It looks like that Edwards realized the Sheriff had no case and that is why he did not prosecute it. Ditto the outside DA who acted the same way. Then it appears that the U. S. Attorney tried to scrounge up prosecutable evidence while delaying trial and when she could not cobble a case together that she was then forced, presumably by the judge, to dismiss the case. Surely the judge knows what the "new evidence" is.

    If indeed, "new evidence" came to light in mid-winter, the public has a right to know what that new evidence was. We doubt that any "new evidence" came to light that late. We suspect the state and federal prosecutors knew from day one that there was not a case here, but they tried to extort guilty pleas and when they realized they would have to try the cases they then dropped them, knowing they'd never get a conviction from a jury.

    Not to put too fine a point on this, we would add that we do not accept the explanation that Edwards gave us for why he did not prosecute the case in a timely manner (i.e., based not on evidence dredged up after the arrests but on what the Beaufort County Sheriff presented to him). He said it was because of the families involved in the case. That's not sufficient. There are always families involved in every such case. And in a small community like Washington and Beaufort County, it is rare that there are not some family connections even to prosecutors. So what made this case so unusual that it had to be moved out of the district? Does that mean that "well connected" defendants are not prosecuted in Beaufort County?

    And if the Sheriff's Department blew the case, we think the public should know that. The way that should have been done was in open court for all the world to see.

    There are other very troubling rumors connected to this case. We'll refrain from commenting on those until and unless we can corroborate them. But suffice it to say here that it does not appear that Lady Justice was blind in this case.

    We think people who illegally deal in drugs should be prosecuted. But if the evidence is not there then we don't think people should have their lives, and bank accounts, crushed by heavy-handed prosecutors. These people suffered immeasurably. And apparently for no solid reason. We are not arguing whether they are innocent or not. That is not the issue. The issue is whether there was sufficient evidence to prove they are guilty of the crimes as charged. The way this case played out it is obvious these people were not guilty. They should not have been subjected to the punishment they were subjected to, which is immense. But more than that, they should not have been subjected to it and the prosecutors and law enforcement officials not held accountable for their actions.

    Justice was not served in this case. And that is an abomination of justice.

    Thank you for your interest. Please pass this on to other interested NC citizens.
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