Articles Posted in Drug Crimes

A North Carolina mother and son were recently arrested for possessing chemicals and equipment used to manufacture methamphetamine, according to a report by WBTV.

Lisa Woodie Sanders, 47, and her son Thomas Jason Triplett, 28, were arrested by the Caldwell County Sheriff’s Office this past week according to police spokesmen. Officers were alerted thanks to anonymous tips that the two were involved in cooking meth. The officers then searched both the mother and son’s property and found the necessary chemicals for making the drug hidden in a cooler.

The two individuals have been interviewed by police and more arrests could follow in the coming days. The son was placed in the Caldwell County Detention Center on a $7,500 bond while the mom was placed in jail under a $2,500 bond.

This case illustrates a couple of points that are worth noting. The first is that serious criminal charges can be brought against an individual if he or she is accused of having committed a drug crime. The second is that any resulting drug crime conviction can lead to severe penalties that can follow an individual for years to come.

As other street drugs become harder to get, homemade small meth labs are springing up across North Carolina and across the country. As a result, police are anticipating increased meth raids in the future. If Sanders and Triplett have no yet retained an experienced criminal defense attorney, both need to do so immediately. The charges against the two are very serious and the penalties they will now be facing are severe. Their defense should not be left in the hands of inexperienced attorneys, but instead the capable hands of skilled criminal defense professionals.

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According to the News & Observer the UNC-Chapel Hill physicist that is currently being held in Argentina after being found with two kilos of cocaine is saying a personality disorder led him to being so easily lured into smuggling the drugs.

The professor, Paul Frampton, the Louis D. Rubin, Jr. Distinguished Professor of physics and astronomy, flew to South America in the first place only after having been tricked over the Internet into believing that he would be meeting a young model. Instead, when he arrived in Bolivia he was told to carry a suitcase to Argentina and ultimately on to the U.S. The drugs were stored in a kind of false bottom to the suitcase that was otherwise empty. Frampton was arrested before he was to leave Argentina, while still in the main airport in Buenos Aires. He now faces up to 16 years in prison.

Frampton admits that a normal person would not have so readily agreed to such a scheme. “I’m an outlier in the naivety quotient as well as IQ,” he said. “I buy that. “There were, of course, warning signs that most people would have viewed with great suspicion, and this diagnosis as a defense explains the foolishness,” he said. “But I certainly had no idea there were illegal drugs and certainly had no idea of smuggling drugs to make money.”

Frampton’s defense lawyers said that they hired a forensic psychologist to meet with him while in prison and who was able to diagnose Frampton with a schizoid personality disorder that causes him to be unusually gullible. Friends and family say the news comes as absolutely no shock. His ex-wife, Anne-Marie Frampton, says, “He is totally devoted to physics and to his students, but in the rest of his life he has always been like a child.”

Other friends of the professor said that he has a history of similar unfortunate incidents, including the pursuit of young foreign women on the Internet. A friend and Nobel laureate said that Frampton once persuaded a Chinese woman in her 20s to marry him, but when he flew to China she took one look at him and changed her mind.

Frampton and the school are also now fighting over his pay after UNC decided to stop paying his salary saying that he was unable to do his job from an Argentine prison. He filed suit saying that he was able to perform his work from prison, having written two research papers and properly advised his graduate students via telephone. Just last week an Orange County judge turned down his request for an injunction.

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In a Catawba County home, deputies found a liquor still, 100 jars of “white lightning” moonshine, 40 firearms, 195 grams of marijuana, prescription drugs, and more than $13,000 in cash. The resident, Mr. Timothy Scott Fox, has been charged with possession with intent to sell and deliver marijuana, maintaining a dwelling for a controlled substance, possession and sale of non-tax paid alcohol, possession and sale of alcohol without a permit, and manufacturing liquor without a permit. Mr. Fox is now out on $15,000 bond.

Interestingly, this bust and subsequent arrest arose out of what is called a “knock and talk.” When police suspect that criminal activity is present at a location, but they do not have enough evidence to obtain a search warrant, many times they will knock on the door of a location to interact with the persons at the residence and hopefully obtain enough evidence to meet the probable cause requirement for a search warrant.

In this case, police stated that they knocked on Fox’s door, and as they talked with him, they became suspicious of what was inside the home. No facts are given as to what their basis for the search warrant actually was in this case, however, many different things can serve as the basis of a warrant. For example, the smell of marijuana can give rise to probable cause. Another possible scenario is if police look into the interior of a home and they see ingredients that either are contraband, or are typically associated with contraband. Actually seeing the liquor still in this case would obviously be enough for probable cause.

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