Opinion ID: 2709585
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Ford’s Arrest and the Subsequent Indictments

Text: On August 11, 2010, an officer conducted a traffic stop after observing Ford driving erratically in Beloit. During the course of that stop, officers searched Ford’s person and located a key chain containing two bags of heroin. Immediately following his arrest, officers observed Ford moving around in the back seat of the squad car as if he were attempting to conceal an item behind him. Shortly thereafter, a strip search at the jail revealed seventy bindles containing a total of 11.621 grams of heroin between Ford’s buttocks. Ford later testified that the seventy bags of heroin in his possession at the time of his arrest was the daily supply he had just picked up from Vaughn. After weighing the contents of the bags, Detective Andre Sayles estimated that each package contained 0.13 gram of heroin. Six days after Ford’s arrest, a grand jury in the Western District of Wisconsin returned a one-count indictment against Vaughn and Lockhart for conspiring with each other, Ford, and others to distribute 100 grams or more of heroin from May 2010 to August 10, 2010 in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 841(a)(1) and 21 U.S.C. § 846. Officers arrested Lockhart on August 29, 2011 and Vaughn 6 Nos. 12-1835 & 12-1947 on October 10, 2011 without recovering any physical evidence. Both defendants pleaded not guilty to the charged offense.