Lawyer disputes rationale for couple's Priceville arrest on drug trafficking charges
May 3—Two Florida residents were arrested Wednesday night in Priceville on drug trafficking and child endangerment charges following a traffic stop their attorney says was unjustified and based on misleading claims.
"What the police from Priceville have put out there seems to be contradictory in some ways from what you see and hear on video," Decatur attorney Carl Cole said Friday.
An affidavit signed by a Priceville police officer states that at approximately 9:25 p.m., a traffic stop was initiated after officers observed a black Mercedes-Benz C-300 traveling south on Interstate 65 with an obstructed windshield. The officer then followed behind the vehicle, noting it was traveling 56 mph in a 70 mph zone and impeding the flow of traffic.
Priceville police said they identified the driver and passenger as Pensacola residents Jonathan Garrett Green, 38, and Britney Jenay McKinney, 33. A juvenile was also found in the backseat. Police said after an officer requested Green's credentials, he refused to roll down his window completely and rolled it down only an inch.
Eventually, police said Green showed them his driver's license.
"Once the officer finishes this portion of the stop, he explains to Green that he smells the odor of marijuana and asks Green and McKinney to exit the vehicle for a probable cause search," police said.
The affidavit said the officer also saw marijuana paraphernalia in plain view inside the vehicle.
The suspects refused to comply with a search, according to police, and a backup officer was called to the scene. Police said Green and McKinney were told several times to leave the vehicle as they were under arrest. Finally, the driver's side window was forcibly removed and Green was extracted from the vehicle.
"After a brief struggle, Green was handcuffed and placed into a patrol car," police said. "McKinney was then extracted from the vehicle along with a brief struggle before being handcuffed and secured in a separate patrol car."
The affidavit said while being removed from the vehicle, McKinney attempted to grab onto "interior components" of the vehicle.
"When escorted to their patrol vehicle, McKinney physically resisted, attempting to pull away, and break away from officers' control," the affidavit said. "When in the vehicle (McKinney) began to kick/strike the vehicle's prisoner partition."
Police found 157 grams of THC concentrate oil, 127 grams of marijuana, various drug paraphernalia, and two firearms inside the vehicle, according to the affidavit.
According to Priceville police, Green and McKinney were transported to Morgan County Jail and charged with trafficking dangerous drugs, first-degree unlawful possession of marijuana, unlawful possession of drug paraphernalia, obstructing governmental operations and resisting arrest. Because of the presence of a juvenile in the car, police said the pair were also charged with chemical endangerment of a child.
Police said the Morgan County Department of Human Resources took custody of the juvenile and Cole said the child was still in their custody as of Friday afternoon.
They were originally booked and held in lieu of a $203,000 bond, along with conditions that they wear ankle monitors and that they remain in Alabama, but Cole said their bonds were lowered to $5,000 each on Friday afternoon and all bond conditions were removed. A preliminary hearing is scheduled for May 17, according to court records.
McKinney recorded a 47-minute-long Facebook Live video during the encounter with police, which is available at decaturdaily.com.
"What's the basis of the original stop," Green asks repeatedly on the live video.
"I'm about to bust this window," an officer replied.
Green, who Cole said has a law degree, begins yelling that he is being "civilly disobedient," after which the officer begins smashing out his window and McKinney begins screaming.
After officers get Green out of the vehicle, they put him stomach-down on the ground and put handcuffs on him.
"Back up," an officer yells at McKinney as she repeatedly tells him to stop.
McKinney is then asked to exit the vehicle, but she refuses, stating her baby is in the vehicle.
"If you don't step out of the car, I'm going to remove you from the car," the officer said.
When McKinney asked why she must step outside the vehicle, the officer replied, "Because we can, there's case law that allows us to do this."
The officer then grabs McKinney to remove her from the vehicle, at which point she begins screaming again. The cellphone she was using for the video is dropped, and from that point on, only audio is captured — no video footage.
"Stop resisting and put your hands behind your back," the officer said.
"Mom, my baby is in Alabama, come help me," Mckinney said, speaking to the live video that was still recording.
Around 14 minutes into the video, the child can be heard crying off camera as an officer's voice is heard trying to soothe and calm the child.
A preliminary hearing for McKinney is currently scheduled for May 13 on the chemical endangerment charge.
According to the affidavit, McKinney "knowingly permitted her juvenile child to be exposed to and allowed to inhale a controlled substance —THC concentrate oil, Marijuana — while the child was positioned in the rear seat of the vehicle within arms reach of the narcotics."
Cole said this statement was "garbage."
He said it's common for officers to claim they smell marijuana as a reason to conduct a drug search during a traffic stop.
"From there, they are extrapolating, 'Well, if I say I detect the odor of marijuana, they are then going to try to tell you that someone (inside the vehicle) is smoking,'" he said. "You don't hear anything about finding a burnt joint. They are trying to make this out to be that they were smoking weed in a car with a kid, which couldn't be further from the truth."
Cole said the marijuana and THC concentrate oil were prescriptions the couple had received in Florida and happened to be in the vehicle with them at the time of the traffic stop. He said the two had just recently gotten married.
"They charged them with chemical endangerment because the marijuana was in arm's reach of the child," Cole said. "What they don't say is that the child is restrained in a car seat. The locked container that the medical marijuana is in is in the floorboard of the back seat, where no kid restrained in a car seat can reach it. So, it's a self-serving statement that doesn't provide all the facts and it is designed to paint this guy and his wife, who neither has any criminal history, in the most unflattering light possible."
Cole said he's skeptical of the justification police gave for initiating the traffic stop.
"The very statement they make that he was obstructing traffic by going 56 in a 70 is baffling to me because when a police officer gets behind you, you automatically slow down in case he wants you to stop," Cole said. "This is not reassuring to me that this was a valid traffic stop."
Priceville Police Chief Jerry Holmes, in an emailed response to questions Friday evening, said pretextual traffic stops are permissible under the Fourth Amendment as long as there's probable cause to believe a traffic violation has occurred, and he said the defendants' slow speed justified the stop under Supreme Court precedent "even if the officer's true motivation for the stop is to investigate a more serious offense... ."
"Once [the officer] made contact with the occupants of the vehicle and smelled the odor of marijuana, probable cause was established to investigate further especially with a child seated in the rear of the vehicle," Holmes wrote. "The couple refused to cooperate at this stage of the investigation and arrests were made. My officer(s) smelled marijuana and ultimately they found marihuana."
— wesley.tomlinson@decaturdaily.com or 256-340-2442.
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