Houston Chronicle
August 19, 1988
Wade jurors view videotape of drug equipment inventory
by Richard Stewart
Houston Chronicle
SHERMAN - Jurors in the federal drug conspiracy trial of ousted orange county sheriff James Wade on Thursday viewed a videotape of Orange deputies inventorying illegal drug lab equipment that later showed up in a drug raid in adjacent Hardin County.
The tape of the 1985 inventory came during a day in which federal prosecutors presented testimony to lay the groundwork to connect Wade to a methamphetamine manufacturing and distribution operation.
Prosecutors allege that Wade took money from his department's special fund for undercover drug buys and used it to fund his own drug operation.
The also allege he used equipment from his department's evidence vault to operate his drug labs.
As jurors watched a television screen showing Orange County officers unloading laboratory glassware, a vacuum pump, a five-gallon jug, a chemical pH meter and other items from a van, they could view the same items spread before them in real life.
Earlier this week, Hardin County Sheriff H. R. "Mike" Holzapfel identified the items as some of the things his officers seized in an October drug lab raid.
Orange County sheriff's Capt. Thomas Hennigan testified that only the sheriff, his chief deputy and the evidence custodian had keys to the department's evidence vault.
An audit of the department's drug buying fund shortly after Wade became sheriff in 1985 showed a problem with money being withdrawn by officers without justification, Hennigan testified.
He said that even after the audit, Wade filed Justifications for less than half the money he withdrew from the fund. Hennigan computed that another officer filed justifications for 93 percent of the money that officer got from the fund.
In other testimony, operators of rental property in Orange County testified they sold or rented three different homes to a man who called himself Donnie Flowers or Donnie Smith in 1986 and 1987.
Wade is charged with conspiring with Flowers to make and distribute drugs.
A telephone company representative testified that records showed someone place three telephone calls from the Orange sheriff's office to a Houston bail bond company the night and morning after a man named Addie Guillory was arrested in Houston.
Charges against Wade allege he bailed Guillory out of jail so he could participate in the drug operation.
If convicted of all 10 counts alleged in his federal indictment, Wade could face up to 125 Years in jail and fines of more than $4 million.
He lost his first bid for re-election in a Democratic Party runoff in April and recently was removed from office pending the outcome of his federal trial.
U. S. District Judge Howell Cobb ordered the trial moved to Sherman from Beaumont because of pretrial publicity.
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