Birmingham Man Sentenced to 20 Years in Prison for Selling Heroin that Caused a Death
BIRMINGHAM — A federal judge sentenced a Birmingham man to 20 years in prison for selling heroin that caused the 2013 death of a Northport man, announced U.S. Attorney Joyce White Vance and Drug Enforcement Administration Assistant Special Agent in Charge Clay A. Morris.
HAROLD DONNELL MIMS, 31, pleaded guilty in February to selling heroin that resulted in the death of the 28-year-old man at a Tuscaloosa apartment complex. The charge carries a mandatory minimum 20-year sentence.
“Heroin is a deadly drug, and, as today’s sentence illustrates, if you sell heroin that causes someone to overdose and die, you can be prosecuted and spend at least 20 years in prison,” Vance said.
“Fighting the spread of heroin use and overdose deaths requires a community-wide commitment,” Vance said. “On June 10, leaders in the medical, law enforcement and education communities will present a summit in Birmingham on the wide-ranging heroin problem so that the community can begin formulating a plan of action. We look forward to being part of that work,” she said.
“Today’s sentence should send a clear message to the drug traffickers who sell poison to our children,” Morris said. “That message is that law enforcement will tirelessly work to investigate those who sell any amount of heroin. The use, abuse and distribution of heroin is rising at alarming rates, and, unfortunately, so is the overdose death rate,” he said. “The investigation and prosecution of heroin traffickers is one of many important steps in eliminating heroin from our communities.”
Authorities arrested Mims during a roundup of heroin dealers in north Alabama in September. The roundup was part of an initiative launched in 2012 by the U.S. Attorney’s Office, the DEA, district attorneys, and many federal, state and local law enforcement agencies to attack the supply of heroin in the Northern District of Alabama.
Mims’ sold heroin to a confidential police source and to undercover officers in 2012 and 2013, and police were monitoring his actions when he sold heroin on Feb. 21, 2013, to the Northport man who ingested it and died later that night in Tuscaloosa, according to his plea agreement.
Mims was one of 49 people who had been indicted on drug distribution charges over the first several months of 2013 and were targeted for arrest in the September sweep. Of the 49 defendants, 39 have pled guilty and one was convicted at trial. One defendant remained a fugitive until April, when he was arrested in Atlanta.
The heroin community action summit, “Pills to Needles: The Pathway to Rising Heroin Deaths,” will be from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., June 10, at the University of Alabama at Birmingham National Alumni Society House, 1301 1st Ave. South. A registration form is available through the following link: http://go.usa.gov/8BGj.
The DEA investigated the cases in conjunction with many state and local agencies. Assistant U.S. Attorney L. James Weil Jr. is prosecuting the cases.
Regions Bank Found Liable for Fraud, Ordered to Pay Local Sewer Company Millions
MOBILE, Ala. – Following a week-long trial in January, an arbitration panel has found that Regions Bank bilked a local sewer company out of millions of dollars. The panel concluded that Regions Bank defrauded Baldwin County Sewer by selling the company a series of complex, interest rate swaps. Regions Bank was ordered to provide Baldwin County Sewer with nearly $10 million in compensation. The case is believed to be one of the first cases in the country where a bank has been held liable for fraud in connection with the sale of an interest rate swap.
The interest rate swaps were part of a financing package that Regions Bank began marketing to small companies, churches, and nonprofits in the early 2000s. As part of the financing packages, customers issued bonds that carried a variable interest rate. These bonds were more profitable for the bank than traditional loans. Baldwin County Sewer issued four series of these bonds. It also purchased three interest rate swaps from Regions Bank. Regions Bank told Baldwin County Sewer that the interest rate swaps would fix the sewer company’s interest rate. However, when the market crashed in 2008, the sewer company’s interest rate nearly doubled.
The arbitration panel found there was a “pervasive failure” within Regions Bank to communicate the true risks of interest rate swaps to its customers and that these failures constituted a “material misrepresentation.”
Regions Bank’s marketing and advertising campaigns were critical to the panel’s award. The panel emphasized that Regions Bank “through its advertising, repeatedly held itself out to the community as a ‘trusted advisor’” and “assumed the relationship of an advisor, as well as being a creditor.”
Billy Bonner, an attorney for Baldwin County Sewer and a partner at the Mobile, Alabama law firm of Cunningham Bounds, LLC, described the arbitration panel’s award as “unprecedented.” In these types of cases, “banks typically argue that the legalese in their loan documents bars a customer’s fraud claims,” said Bonner, “but here the panel did not buy that argument. The panel held Regions Bank accountable for the misrepresentations it made to its customer.”
Regions Bank had a limited right to appeal the award, but elected to satisfy the award in full.
Bonner and his partner, Skip Finkbohner, both of Cunningham Bounds, LLC, served as lead co-counsel in the case.
Clay County Jail Administrator Sentenced to Four Years in Prison for Violating Inmates’ Civil Rights
BIRMINGHAM — A federal judge sentenced the former Clay County jail administrator to four years in prison for using his authority to sexually abuse or otherwise deprive inmates of their civil rights, announced U.S. Attorney Joyce White Vance, FBI Special Agent in Charge Richard D. Schwein Jr. and Alabama Bureau of Investigation Division Chief Neil G. Tew.
JEFFREY SCOTT COTNEY, 48, of Ashland, pleaded guilty in February to four counts of deprivation of rights under color of law between May 2009 and spring 2010, while he worked as administrator of the Clay County Detention Center. U.S. District Judge L. Scott Coogler sentenced Cotney for the civil rights violations. Along with the prison term, Judge Coogler ordered Cotney to register as a sex offender and prohibited him from seeking or holding a law enforcement job or any position granting him custodial authority over others. Cotney agreed to all those conditions in his plea agreement with the government.
“We’re committed to working with the FBI and ABI to ensure this kind of abuse is uncovered and prosecuted,” Vance said.
While jails and prisons strip inmates of many individual rights, including freedom of movement, freedom of action and freedom of choice, the government notes in its sentencing memorandum, incarcerated individuals retain the right to be free of cruel and unusual punishment, to maintain bodily integrity, and to not be deprived of liberty without due process of law.
“The system of incarceration requires trustworthy, honorable individuals who will properly exercise the immense powers granted to them by the State,” the government said in its memorandum. “Defendant Cotney violated individuals’ constitutional rights, abused the public trust, and corrupted the judicial process.”
Part of Cotney’s job as Clay County’s jail administrator was running the inmate worker program, recommending which inmates could participate in the program and supervising the inmate workers.
Cotney pleaded guilty to four counts of depriving three different inmates of their civil rights, but the conduct he admitted in his plea agreement also includes a fourth inmate.
In his plea, Cotney admitted to coercing one inmate to submit to a sexual act on four occasions in 2009, three times at Cotney’s home and once on the side of the road during a trip to Oxford for automobile parts.
Cotney admitted to violating the civil rights of a second inmate in 2009, forcing that inmate to submit to a strip search with no law enforcement justification.
Cotney admitted that he repeatedly and improperly grabbed and touched a third inmate in 2009 and 2010. Cotney acknowledged he told the inmate that he needed to check whether the inmate had any new tattoos and ordered the inmate to remove all his clothing. The inmate had tattoos on his legs, chest, hipbones, arms and groin, and Cotney felt all the tattoos, according to his plea.
Cotney also admitted to falsely accusing a fourth inmate of possessing contraband and ordering that inmate into lockdown for 45 days and then having him transferred to a state prison, all in retaliation for the man rejecting a sexual proposition from Cotney.
The FBI and ABI investigated the case, which Assistant U.S. Attorneys Tamarra Matthews-Johnson and Elizabeth Holt prosecuted.
