Metro Officer Acquitted of Drug-Theft Charges
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Miami Herald, The (FL) Nearly three years after he was charged in a multimillion-dollar marijuana rip-off dating to 1982, Metro-Dade police Sgt. Waymon Byrd finally got a jury's verdict Monday: not guilty on all counts. ``I feel good,'' Byrd said after he was acquitted of charges of marijuana trafficking, conspiracy and grand theft. He added that he would ``of course'' ask for his job back at Metro. That decision will come only after internal affairs investigators finish reviewing the case, said Metro-Dade spokesman Ed Munn. Byrd, a Metro veteran, has been suspended without pay since surrendering in January 1994 to face criminal charges. He had been with the force 19 years at that point, most recently attached to a specialized anti-robbery task force. Prosecutors alleged that Byrd and a crew of other Metro officers, some of whom testified against him in exchange for immunity, helped drug dealers drive off with a trailer loaded with 20,000 pounds of confiscated pot that belonged to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration in July 1982. The agency had hired off-duty police officers to guard the marijuana at a warehouse. Prosecutors David Maher and Gertrude Novicki believed they had a strong case against Byrd, the only person charged in the theft: They had testimony from alleged co-conspirators, including James Ward, a former Metro officer fired in 1982 after pleading guilty to charges connected to a different marijuana rip-off. Ward, who was released after serving 10 months of a six-year prison sentence, received immunity in this case in exchange for testifying. The state also had Byrd's voice on tapes of numerous conversations that Ward secretly recorded starting in August 1993, after Metro internal affairs investigators first heard the sergeant might have been involved in the 1982 case. And the prosecutors also showed that Byrd's net worth jumped from less than zero to about $200,000 after the rip-off occurred. But Byrd's attorney, Sam Rabin, argued the state's case was flimsy, built on recordings that were at best ambiguous and testimony from ``scumbags'' willing to say anything to save their own skins. ``I think the state underestimated the effect the deals they made would have on the jury,'' Rabin said Monday. Rabin also argued that prosecutors failed to prove that Byrd's sudden prosperity was the result of illicit activity, and also failed to look into alternative, and legal, explanations for it -- though the attorney did not offer one. Maher, an assistant state attorney, referred questions to his boss, Novicki. She did not return phone messages seeking comment. Prosecutors could not charge the civilian participants in the rip-off because the statute of limitations had run out. Byrd could still be prosecuted because the statute of limitations does not apply to police. Court appeals on that issue helped delay Byrd's trial, which began two weeks ago. Metro-Dade internal affairs investigators said they received information about the DEA drug theft around 1992 that revealed links among Byrd, Ward and another Metro officer, Timothy Hand. Hand was sentenced to 10 years in prison in April upon his conviction on drug trafficking, conspiracy and armed robbery charges in the same 1980 roadside marijuana rip-off in which Ward pleaded guilty. Hand did not testify in Byrd's trial. |
