Meth A Memoir

by Wayne Huffman

  My preliminary hearing started, and the arresting officer was put on the stand. The prosecutor asked what happened, and the officer basically said he pulled me over because there had been a call from a “concerned motorist,” stating that I was driving down the road, hitting myself in the head. Even as fucked up as I was, I’d remember doing that if it was true, which it wasn’t, I don’t think. My lawyer gets his turn, and asks the cop if he personally witnessed me doing anything unusual. “No.” Why did the officer ask me, when he first approached me, if I was on drugs? Isn’t it common to ask if someone is drunk? No answer to those two questions.

  The judge was beginning to take my side. He told the cop that if he couldn’t give some good reason for pulling me over, then he was dismissing the charges and turning me loose. That’s when my mind was blown after the cop said the following, with resignation in his voice: “Your Honor, we had an anonymous 911 call that there was a meth lab in that vehicle.” WHAT?!? Did I hear that right? Was I still hallucinating? I turned around just in time to see Lisa running out the door. THAT FUCKING BITCH! She got me again.

  Chapter 29

  By the time I got my new lawyer appointed to me in criminal court, I was over the impression I might actually be getting out of jail any time soon. Lisa sure wasn’t planning on getting me out. It wouldn’t have really mattered much at that point anyway if she tried, because my other two bonds got revoked as soon as I appeared in front of the criminal court judge.

  My new lawyer, Ms. Whiting, asked the judge if he would agree to hear all three of my cases together as one. This judge was my judge on the Elizabethton charges as well as this new one in Johnson City. He agreed, and Ms. Whiting said this was good for me, because the prosecutor in Johnson City didn’t give a shit about the Elizabethton charges.

  This ended up being very true, because just a few weeks after my first criminal court appearance, Ms. Whiting came to me with an offer of two years probation for all three charges. I was all for that, but Ms. Whiting asked me to turn it down. She said that if I gave her two weeks, she could get all of the charges dismissed. I decided to trust her.

  Two weeks passed, then three, four, five... It was almost two months before I heard from Ms. Whiting again, and when I did, it wasn’t the good news I was expecting. Ms. Whiting told me that she had been taken off of my cases, because all of my cases were on hold. The feds, she said, were in the process of investigating, to see if they wanted to pick up the charges, and charge me federally. I was a little worried at this point.

  In the end, the feds didn’t charge me. I don’t know why they didn’t, but I’m guessing it had something to do with me being charged two times for the same crime in Elizabethton. Once the feds dropped their investigation, my Elizabethton charges got sent back to Carter County criminal court. I went to court again, finally, in Carter County and got my new lawyer there, Bobby. Bobby told me when we first met, that Ms. Whiting had called him and told him how she was planning on beating all of my charges. He said he would stick to that plan.

  Bobby filed a motion to suppress all of the evidence in the Carter County cases. The basis for the motion was that the original traffic stop was bullshit, because even if I didn’t signal, that would not have been illegal as long as there were no other vehicles behind me on the road. Tennessee law states, when making a right hand turn, you have to use a turn signal to let the cars behind you know you are turning. If there are no cars, you are not expected, by law, to signal.

  Bobby also stated in the motion that I was harassed by the Drug Task Force when I refused to work for them, by searching my house a second time. Even though I signed a Consent-to-Search form, they had no right to even ask me if they could search again, because a crime wasn’t being committed. By the way, when I say “DTF”, I mean Agent W specifically.

  The day of my hearing for the motion came and I went to court. One of the first witnesses against me was the K-9 officer from the night of my bust.

  “Did your dog alert you to drugs in the defendant’s vehicle?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you find any drugs?”

  “No.”

  My lawyer asked about how many times the dog had searched, both in training and on duty, for drugs. I believe the answer was close to two thousand times. “Has your dog ever given a false alert like he did on the defendant’s vehicle?”

  “Yes.”

  “How many times?”

  “Two times previously.”

  What do you want to bet those other two times the cops found other shit to arrest the person for, after using the false positive alert as probable cause?

  The cop who pulled me over got on the stand and proved to have a wonderful memory. Not only did he remember there was a vehicle behind me when I supposedly didn’t use my turn signal, he actually remembered there were three vehicles behind me. Not only that, he could tell you the color, make, and model of all three, and what order they were in behind me. Did I mention it had been fifteen months since that night? Could he tell us the color, make, and model of the last three cars he pulled over? “No.” Get off the fucking stand!

  Agent W got there next. Long story short, he lied also. He claimed he never asked me to work as an informant.

  “Agent W, isn’t it common practice to ask people you’ve arrested if they are willing to work with you in order to help themselves?”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “But, you didn’t ask the defendant?”

  “No.”

  “Any reason why not?”

  “No.”

  Agent W claimed that he never harassed me, never searched my house the second time. In fact, he claimed he never even saw me again after the night he arrested me the first time.

  “Why is your name on the second arrest affidavit if you never saw the defendant again after the first arrest?”

  “I signed the affidavit, but did not participate in the arrest.” BULLSHIT! He was the motherfucker that arrested me!

  I got on the stand at long last. I gave the judge the whole story. The truth. I even informed the judge that Agent W was lying about not participating in the second arrest, and that my wife was there at the time. She saw the whole thing.

  The prosecutor got up and asked me, “Is your wife here today?”

  “No.”

  “No more questions.”

  When I was finished and I got off the witness stand, the judge was quiet for several minutes. When he spoke, he asked me if I had any way of contacting my wife to ask her to come be a witness for me. I told him I didn’t know where she was, because we hadn’t spoken since my arrest.

  “I have a problem,” the judge said to me, “I believe you. I believe your story of the events as you say they happened. My problem is that I have all these officers telling me a different story. It’s your word against all of theirs, so what do I do?” Again, the judge was silent.

  “Sir,” he addressed me, “Do you have any witnesses at all you can bring to this court to back up your story?”

  “No sir.”

  “Are you certain? If you can bring me one witness, just one, I’ll rule in your favor and dismiss all charges against you.”

  “Sorry sir, I don’t have one.”

  The judge had no choice but to rule against me and said he would get me back in court in two months and get me sentenced. If my lawyer could get me a good deal, I could get all this behind me. I was taken back to jail to await my fate.

  In early February, about two weeks after my motion hearing, I was awakened by one of the jailers, and told to get ready for court. This was a little confusing, because I didn’t have a court date for another six weeks. I got ready, and I was transported to the courthouse. It was around nine in the morning when I got there, but court hadn’t started yet.

  As soon as I walked into the courtroom my lawyer led me to an interview room.

  Bobby handed me a piece of paper and said, “Read this. I’ll be right back,” then he left.

  I read the paper, and t
ried to make sense out of it. Bobby walked back into the room, and I asked, “What does this mean?”

  He smiled and said, “It means they fucked up, and they know it.”

  What Bobby had given me, was a letter, from the prosecutor, to the judge. The letter stated that, after the motions hearing, Agent W “had his memory refreshed” and now remembered that some of the events I described in my testimony might have been closer to the truth than he originally thought. The judge wasn’t happy. According to him, I had been in jail “for nothing” for almost a year. Now, we all know that I wasn’t in jail for “nothing.” I just wanted the manufacturing charges dropped. They had me dead to rights on the rest.

  The judge set a new court date for April 2006, and then released me on an O.R. bond. It was a good day, and I was happy; in shock, as you can probably imagine, but happy. My court appearance that day had been in Carter County, so I had to wait until the jail could arrange to transport me back to Washington County, where I was still being housed due to my Washington County charge. I arrived back in Washington County at about 1 a.m. I told the jailer that I had been given an O.R. bond, and he told me I would be taken back to my cell to pack my stuff while they got the paperwork done.

  I went back to my cell and packed. My roommate and I talked for a little while, and I started to think it was taking them an awfully long time for them to come and get me to let me out. I asked what the problem was, and was told that there was a case number on my file that wasn’t listed on the O.R. bond. I would have to wait until the courthouse opened to get it straightened out. That’d be on Monday, and unfortunately, it was only Saturday morning then. I had to spend the whole weekend in jail waiting. It was a very, very long weekend.

  Chapter 30

  When I did finally get released from jail, in February of 2006, I was pretty much screwed. I was sitting in booking while the cops got my release papers in order, not knowing where I was going to go, or what I was going to do. I didn’t even have any clothes to wear since the DTF destroyed everything I was wearing the night I got arrested. The cops took me to a room with a bunch of clothes I could look through to see if anything in there would fit me. Everything in that room looked like shit the Salvation Army rejected in 1974. I was starting to wonder if I really wanted to get out of jail after all.

  Minutes before I signed out of the jail, a cop walked through the door with a shoe box and several shopping bags. These were dropped off to me by my first wife, Karen, whom I had been writing for the last couple of months of my incarceration. Karen had gone out and bought me several pairs of jeans, some shirts, shoes, and just about everything I needed at the moment, right down to a toothbrush. The cop said Karen would be waiting out front for me when I got out. Things were suddenly looking up.

  I left the jail, and Karen was parked in a handicap spot right outside the jail. I had Karen drive to a store next to the jail, so I could cash the $30 check the jail had given me for the money I had on my commissary, account. This money was given to me by the roommate who I had sold the television too that Karen had dropped off for me. I went into the store, and bought some cigarettes and a Coke. The two things I had been dreaming about for almost a year. When I got back in the car, Karen asked me if I wanted to go get something to eat. I did.

  We headed to Greeneville, TN. to eat. Since Karen was engaged to her long time boyfriend, she didn’t want to take a chance on anyone seeing us together if we were hanging out in Johnson City. After we started talking about where I was going to stay, I suggested the Salvation Army in Johnson City. Since it was close to a day labor place, and since I needed to work, that seemed like the best idea.

  Karen dropped me off at the Salvation Army around 4:00 p.m. to check in. She said she would be back in the morning to pick me up. The rules of the Salvation Army said that everyone who was not in the long term program had to leave the building at 7:00 a.m. and could return at 4:00 p.m. The long term program was for people who were working and who paid a fee of $50 per week. In exchange for payment, the residents received three meals a day, and a semi-private room with a locker. Paying residents also didn’t have to leave the building on their days off.

  When Karen picked me up the next morning, we went to go get breakfast, and then we just hung out together all day. The second day was a repeat of the first, but Karen got me a cell phone that day so I could find a job, or call her if I needed to. When Karen dropped me off at the Salvation Army on the second day, I told her I would be going to the day labor place the next morning, to see if I could get some work. I would need cash, and eventually, a vehicle.

  The first day I went to the day labor place, I got sent to work at a new hospital that was being built in Greeneville TN. Since I didn’t have a car, I caught a ride with someone else who was going to the same job. I gave the guy 5 bucks a day for letting me ride with him. Before long, I ended up getting assigned to another job with a company that waterproofed basements of new built homes. Every evening, Karen would pick me up at the Salvation Army and take me out to eat. It didn’t take too long, (or a rocket scientist) for me to figure out she was thinking about us getting back together again.

  One evening, after work, one of the guys at the Salvation Army was telling me that he had a friend who had just bought a company with her boyfriend, and they were looking for a new employee. He said the couple’s company would install seats in baseball and football stadiums, movie theaters, auditoriums, and just about anywhere else large groups of people needed to sit down. This guy, (I don’t remember his name) told me I could find his friend, Shala, at a small bar and grill where she was working as a waitress to help out her friend who was the owner of the restaurant. The bar was called “The Cottage”, in Johnson City.

  On my day off, I got Karen to take me to The Cottage for lunch. Shala was easy to spot, with her bleach blond hair, and huge tits. Karen and I ordered our lunch, and I also ordered a beer. When Shala brought me the beer, she dropped it on the table in front of me, spilling it all over. From that day on, I used to tell people, when talking about how we met, that she “threw” the beer at me.

  After Karen and I ate, I told Shala I was interested in the job I heard about. She said she and Mike, her boyfriend, did need to hire a seat installer. The only problem was that the last person she hired didn’t work out, so she wasn’t going to do any hiring without Mikes input and approval first. Shala took down my number, and said someone would be in touch. Right before Karen dropped me off, that same day, I got a call from Mike. He asked if I could be ready to leave town first thing in the morning for a job in Greenville, SC. I said that I could, and he hired me right away.

  Mike showed up about 8:00 a.m. the next morning in a white, diesel, Ford van and I got in. We took off and headed for Greenville. Along the way, I explained my legal problems, and I told him I would have to come back long enough for court, until I got everything straightened out. Mike understood, because he had been in trouble a time or two himself he said.

  We got to the job site late that afternoon, after several stops. There was supposed to be a truck waiting when we got to the site, but it had not arrived yet, so we went to the motel where Mike got a room we would be sharing for a few days until Shala got there. Once we settled in, we left to get something to eat. We stopped at a liquor store on the way back to the motel. I was about to find out that Mike had a serious drinking problem. When we got back to the motel, I drank a couple beers, while Mike downed a pint of Jim Beam. I had not drank hardly any alcohol in almost a year, so I had a little bit of a buzz when we got the call that the truck we were waiting on had finally arrived at the baseball stadium where we would be working.

  When we got to the stadium, I don’t know exactly what I was expecting, but I wasn’t expecting a 53 foot box trailer that we had to unload, by hand. Mike got a forklift from somewhere, and unloaded a few of the pallets of parts from the back of the trailer. Once he pulled everything he could reach, Mike put a pallet jack in the trailer, and I would move the pallets to the back
of the trailer. Since I had not worked this hard in a long time and maybe partly due to the beer, I got sick before half of the truck was unloaded. For a while, I didn’t think that I would make it. I almost quit before that truck was unloaded, but I needed the job and the new start, so I pushed through and got the truck unloaded; job well done.

  The next day, we went to the stadium and started putting seats together. Mike had gotten pretty wasted the night before, and he was still pretty drunk, even at that time in the morning. Most of the concrete anchors for the seats were already set. Mike and Shala had already been on the job for about a week, and that was what they had gotten done so far. That first day, Mike and I just got hinges put on the seat pads and set out parts where they were supposed to go. On the second day, we started installing the seats.

  By the time Shala got there, Mike and I had gotten a lot of work done. I really liked this kind of work. I was being paid cash, and my motel was paid for. I was saving money, and I knew I would be able to buy a car soon. I was also drinking more than I ever had before. Shala and I took to each other instantly. Every day was a party at work, and it wasn’t unusual for Mike to call me over to the van to “talk” about what we needed to do next. That was what we called going to the van to have a couple of beers at break time. Shala was a heavy drinker also, but she didn’t drink on the job. I guess she understood that, as sub-contractors, we could, and most likely would, be run off the job if we were caught drunk on the job.

  After a few weeks, I had a court date. Karen drove to Greenville to pick me up for my court appearance. I went back to Greenville after that, and after 7 weeks we finally finished installing 4200 seats in the Greenville Drives new stadium. We had another job waiting as soon as we were finished with that one, and so we drove straight from Greenville to Branson Mo. to install 1000 seats in the Dick Clark Rock ‘n Roll Hall of Fame Theater. This was a quick job, and we finished with enough time to stop in St. Louis to see the Arch on our way back to Tennessee. Did you know you can go up inside that thing? It’s cool!