The Orange Leader
September 4, 1988
Prosecutors' case against Wade nearly complete
By Mike Wheeler
Staff Reporter
SHERMAN - The drug trial of suspended Orange County Sheriff James W. Wade ended its third week Thursday with jurors hearing testimony from a one-time deputy who said he witnessed the delivery of drug paraphernalia by Wade to an alleged partner.
Prosecutors now have presented nearly 50 of the 55-60 witnesses they estimated would testify against the suspended sheriff. This week conceivably could see the conclusion of the government's case against Wade.
Former Orange County Deputy Donald Duhon testified last week that he was never directly involved in the alleged drug scheme, but said he did receive drugs in Wade's presence and witnessed the delivery by Wade to accused drug dealer Donnie Flowers, an earlier witness against Wade, of laboratory equipment that had been removed from the Orange County Sheriff's Department's evidence storage shed in Orange.
Duhon said he "lived in total hell" during the year he worked for Wade as a deputy because of the knowledge he had that Wade was operating a drug trafficking scheme.
"I never told anyone because I was afraid I would wind up at the bottom of the Sabine River," Duhon testified Thursday.
Duhon's testimony followed and supported earlier accounts by two of Wade's four alleged co-conspirators, one of whom was indicted along with him.
One of the co-conspirators named in the May 2 indictment of Wade, Bobby Rogers, began the week of testimony Monday.
Rogers said he was only indirectly involved in the "speed" operation but was given marijuana on at least five occasions by Wade and paid the sheriff between $500 and $1,100 each time Wade furnished the witness with more marijuana.
Sheriff's Deputy Wayne Dial and Billy Permenter, a former deputy who is now a bridge city police officer, both testified that security leaks in the department's narcotics division caused the failure of most of the division's drug raids during 1986 and 1987.
Dial, although testifying to having suspicions about every officer in the narcotics division, said he never suspected that the security leak could be coming from "higher up" than his own then-rank of captain of the narcotics division.
The week before, Flowers, reputedly the first to tell FBI agents of Wade's involvement in the alleged scheme, testified that the sheriff furnished money from an Orange County narcotics fund, and chemicals and laboratory equipment from previous Orange County drug raids in a two-year-long drug operation.
Flowers, who called Wade "the boss," said he paid wade on a number of occasions for the sheriff's involvement after selling methamphetamine, or "speed," mad3e with the chemicals and equipment Wade furnished.
Both Flowers and Rogers are unindicted co-conspirators and said they have traded testimony against wade for immunity from prosecution concerning the Orange County drug trafficking operation.
A third unindicted co-conspirator, Addie Guillory, has not testified in Wade's trial, which began Aug 15 in Grayson County.
Wade, 43 of Vidor was indicted by a federal grand jury on May 2 after the FBI completed an investigation into Flowers' allegations mad against the sheriff.
Wade was arraigned May 13 and pleaded innocent to all the charges, which include conspiracy to manufacture and distribute a controlled substance, embezzlement of Orange County funds and obstructing justice.
Wade's alleged forth partner, Nyle Henry Baker,59, also of Vidor, was charged with one count of conspiracy to manufacture and distribute a controlled substance.
U. S. District Judge Howell Cobb of Beaumont, who is presiding over Wade's trial in Sherman, separated Wade's and Baker's trials; no trial date has been set for Baker.
Flowers testified that he had been warned on several occasions by Wade of impending drug raids.
A witness whose testimony was videotaped in Beaumont Friday because of a doctor's advice that she not travel to Sherman to testify, said she saw Wade in 1987 give drugs to one of her friends.
Judy Morrison said the sheriff gave Jon Reaud of Beaumont what she believed to be methamphetamine, but the sheriff took no money from Reaud for the delivery.
"The sheriff told Jon, 'This one's on me; don't worry about it.'" Morrison testified.
Morrison testified that she never actually saw drugs change hands, but, said Reaud did show her a plastic bag containing a white powder Reaud said he got from the sheriff.
Testimony in Wade's trial will continue Tuesday at 9 a.m. in the Grayson County Courthouse in Sherman.
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