IAPE Evidence Blog

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette (Lit­tle Rock)
BYLINE: DAVE HUGHES ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE

Van Buren, AR

FORT SMITH — A for­mer Van Buren police sergeant walked out of fed­eral court Thurs­day a free man after a judge sen­tenced him to time served fol­low­ing a fed­eral appeals court rul­ing that the judge’s sen­tence was too long.

U.S. Dis­trict Judge Robert Daw­son told Mik­los Mol­nar, 49, he was free to go fol­low­ing a short hear­ing. After Daw­son left the bench, the court­room filled with Molnar’s fam­ily and friends broke out in applause. Some for­mer co-workers, includ­ing Van Buren Police Chief Ken­neth Bell, also were present and stood silently after the hearing.

Mol­nar, wear­ing tan slacks and a white T-shirt, spent the next few min­utes hug­ging rel­a­tives until a court secu­rity offi­cer told him he could leave the courtroom.

“I just praise God. That’s all I have to say,” he told reporters after the hearing.

Thursday’s hear­ing was sched­uled after the 8th U.S. Cir­cuit Court of Appeals ruled last month that the five-year sen­tence Daw­son gave Mol­nar was too long, accord­ing to fed­eral sen­tenc­ing guide­lines. The court pointed out that, under the guide­lines, Mol­nar should have been sen­tenced to 10 – 16 months in prison.

Molnar’s attor­ney, Richard Bar­low of Van Buren, said after court that Mol­nar served more than 11 months in prison and that his one year anniver­sary would have been March 12.

Daw­son noted dur­ing the hear­ing that Mol­nar had paid the $50,997 resti­tu­tion he was ordered to pay dur­ing his ini­tial sen­tenc­ing Jan. 29, 2009, as well as a $3,000 fine and a $100 spe­cial court assess­ment. On Thurs­day, Daw­son ordered only that Mol­nar observe two years of super­vised release.

Accord­ing to the 8th Cir­cuit, Molnar’s ini­tial prison sen­tence was based on the erro­neous belief by Daw­son that some of the $50,997 Mol­nar took was des­tined to be used as under­cover drug buy money.

“With­out ques­tion, Molnar’s activ­i­ties impaired access to funds that ought to be rel­a­tively acces­si­ble,” Daw­son wrote in a sen­tenc­ing mem­o­ran­dum last year. “Not hav­ing the funds avail­able could then have sig­nif­i­cantly impaired local drug pre­ven­tion activ­i­ties.” Daw­son seemed eager to cor­rect the error Thurs­day as he addressed Mol­nar at the start of the hearing.

“You’re here sooner than I expected you’d be,” Daw­son told Mol­nar. “I’m glad you’re here.” Mol­nar, a 20-year vet­eran of the Van Buren Police Depart­ment, pleaded guilty in August 2007 to a charge of embez­zling money while work­ing as an offi­cer or employee of the government.

Mol­nar was a nar­cotics offi­cer for the Police Depart­ment and a mem­ber of the fed­eral Drug Enforce­ment Administration’s drug task force.

He was sus­pended July 2, 2007, after he told Bell he had taken money from the department’s evi­dence room. Bell had con­fronted him about money miss­ing from the evi­dence room which Mol­nar supervised.

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Inter­na­tional Asso­ci­a­tion for Prop­erty and Evi­dence
“Law Enforce­ment Serv­ing the Needs of Law Enforce­ment“
www.IAPE.org

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette (Lit­tle Rock)
BYLINE: ADAM WALLWORTH ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE

Van Buren, AR

A for­mer Van Buren police offi­cer con­victed of embez­zling drug money will get a new sen­tence after win­ning an appeal.

The deci­sion by a three judge panel of the 8th U.S. Cir­cuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis found in favor of Mik­los A. Mol­nar, 49, who is serv­ing a five-year term for steal­ing nearly $51,000 from the Police Department’s evi­dence locker. The deci­sion handed down last week means the case will go back to U.S. Dis­trict Judge Robert Daw­son in Fort Smith for a new sen­tenc­ing hearing.

Both sides in the case will be given a chance to present facts and tes­ti­mony at the hear­ing, said Deb­bie Groom, act­ing U.S. attor­ney for the West­ern Dis­trict of Arkansas.

Groom said her office likely will present new tes­ti­mony, but the office first will con­duct a thor­ough review. Mol­nar will be resen­tenced, but the court’s rul­ing doesn’t guar­an­tee a reduc­tion in his sen­tence, she said.

Mol­nar, a 20-year depart­ment vet­eran, pleaded guilty in August 2008 to embez­zling $50,997 from evi­dence in 14 cases. Daw­son chose to increase Molnar’s sen­tence to five years from the rec­om­mended 10 to 16 months after hear­ing tes­ti­mony in a Jan. 30, 2009, hearing.

Mol­nar had been in charge of the department’s evi­dence room and was part of a Drug Enforce­ment Admin­is­tra­tion task force when he took money that had been seized by police. Daw­son increased the sen­tence, cit­ing Molnar’s poten­tial impact on fed­eral Drug Enforce­ment Admin­is­tra­tion investigations.

In its deci­sion, the panel quoted Daw­son, who told Mol­nar that some of the money he took was there­fore not avail­able to the DEA for drug pur­chases. “So I think your activ­i­ties have sig­nif­i­cantly impaired mul­ti­ple drug pre­ven­tion work,” Daw­son told Molnar.

The asser­tion that Mol­nar hin­dered other inves­ti­ga­tions was found to be in error because the DEA couldn’t read­ily access the money to use in inves­ti­ga­tions. The appeals court ruled that the assump­tion led to the unnec­es­sary sen­tenc­ing increase.

“Had the dis­trict court not plainly erred in con­sid­er­ing the facts relat­ing to ‘drug buy’ money, it would not have var­ied upward to the extent — 275 per­cent — that it did,” the panel found.

The panel agreed with Daw­son on the impor­tance of Molnar’s role as a police offi­cer but noted the for­mer offi­cer already had received a higher rec­om­mended sen­tence because of his job.

“Law­break­ing by a high­rank­ing police offi­cer pro­motes dis­re­spect for the law and must be addressed at this sen­tenc­ing,” Daw­son told Mol­nar, accord­ing to court records.

News of the resen­tenc­ing didn’t carry much sig­nif­i­cance for Van Buren Police Chief Ken­neth Bell, who said at the sen­tenc­ing hear­ing that he con­sid­ered Mol­nar a per­sonal friend.

“I really don’t have a thought one way or the other,” Bell said last week.

Bell said his role in the inves­ti­ga­tion ended when he turned it over to the FBI. How­ever, sev­eral changes have been made at the depart­ment to make sure such a crime isn’t repeated, he said.

Mol­nar was the last per­son to be in charge of the evi­dence room and involved in drug inves­ti­ga­tions, Bell said. The depart­ment has since hired a civil­ian to oper­ate the evi­dence locker, he said.

“We’ve got a lot more checks and bal­ances,” Bell said. “Orig­i­nally [Mol­nar] took care of the evi­dence room and was a drug offi­cer. We’ve taken the step to put some­body in between there. Live and learn.” The panel con­sisted of judges C. Arlen Beam of Lin­coln, Neb.; Michael J. Mel­loy of Cedar Rapids, Iowa; and Ray­mond W. Gru­en­der of St. Louis.

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Inter­na­tional Asso­ci­a­tion for Prop­erty and Evi­dence
“Law Enforce­ment Serv­ing the Needs of Law Enforce­ment“
www.IAPE.org

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette (Lit­tle Rock)
BYLINE: JACOB QUINN SANDERS ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE

Ben­tonville, AR

EAST CAMDEN — A fired Ben­tonville Police Depart­ment evi­dence offi­cer and crime scene inves­ti­ga­tor lost her state-issued cer­ti­fi­ca­tion Thursday.

At a meet­ing here, the Arkansas Com­mis­sion on Law Enforce­ment Stan­dards and Train­ing deter­mined that Michelle Mar­garet Smith should be barred from work­ing as a police offi­cer in the state because of poorly orga­nized evi­dence belong­ing to 330 sep­a­rate cases in Ben­tonville and what her for­mer chief, James Allen, called “bizarre” behavior.

After the com­mis­sion handed down its deci­sion, Smith sat qui­etly and shook her head, look­ing stunned.

Smith’s attor­ney, William Put­man of Fayet­teville, argued that a mal­func­tion­ing com­puter sys­tem and a reac­tion to the com­bi­na­tion of a cer­tain antibi­otic med­ica­tion com­bined with doctor-prescribed steroid injec­tions caused both her dimin­ished job per­for­mance and what he called her “manic” emo­tional state.

When it came time for Smith to tes­tify, she described her love of crime scene work and said her prob­lems were behind her.

“I’m great,” she told the com­mis­sion. “I’m men­tally and phys­i­cally bet­ter.” Smith said the days when she would sweat through her clothes and the nights she would sweat through her sheets — all for no clear rea­son — were behind her.

Also gone were her vio­lent dreams.

Allen said of that time in Smith’s life: “It was just baf­fling to us what was occur­ring. It was not the same Michelle Smith we had known for years.” Allen hired Smith from the Jones­boro Police Depart­ment in 2005. She had worked there nearly seven years with no issues.

But in late 2008, after repeated expo­sure to methamphetamine-making chem­i­cals that required she get med­ical treat­ment, some­thing changed.

The evi­dence room began to fall into dis­ar­ray. After Smith’s per­sonal prob­lems wors­ened — her par­ents moved in with her for a time to help, she said — her super­vi­sors learned that she had stopped tak­ing evi­dence to the Arkansas Crime Lab­o­ra­tory in Lit­tle Rock. They found other evi­dence — 18 cases’ worth — in a taped-shut dehu­mid­i­fier box in the main prop­erty room. Smith also failed to sep­a­rate out drugs, guns and cash for stor­age in a more-secure room out­side the main police headquarters.

Allen said the chain of cus­tody was not com­pro­mised, so the mis­han­dled evi­dence ulti­mately did not jeop­ar­dize any crim­i­nal cases. But it took “hun­dreds of hours” to find that out, he said.

Ben­tonville police Lt. Jon Simp­son said Smith also failed to prop­erly store evi­dence she col­lected at crime scenes, includ­ing bul­let frag­ments from an officer-involved shooting.

Allen fired Smith on April 13.

At the hear­ing Thurs­day, Smith and her doc­tor, William McCol­lum, said they felt sure that the com­bi­na­tion of the antibi­otic Lev­aquin and steroid injec­tions to help her recover from methamphetamine-related chem­i­cal expo­sures were at the core of her prob­lems and would not be repeated.

McCol­lum said he saw no issues with Smith per­form­ing the duties nec­es­sary to be a police officer.

Smith said she would not seek a job in another prop­erty room if allowed to keep her cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, but she would like to work as a crime scene inves­ti­ga­tor again.

“I love crime scene [inves­ti­ga­tion],” she said.

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Inter­na­tional Asso­ci­a­tion for Prop­erty and Evi­dence
“Law Enforce­ment Serv­ing the Needs of Law Enforce­ment“
www.IAPE.org