Reynolds v. State

736 So. 2d 500, 1999 Miss. App. LEXIS 153, 1999 WL 185837
CourtCourt of Appeals of Mississippi
DecidedApril 6, 1999
DocketNo. 97-KA-00474 COA
StatusPublished
Cited by4 cases

This text of 736 So. 2d 500 (Reynolds v. State) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of Mississippi primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Reynolds v. State, 736 So. 2d 500, 1999 Miss. App. LEXIS 153, 1999 WL 185837 (Mich. Ct. App. 1999).

Opinion

COLEMAN, J„

for the Court:

¶ 1. Pursuant to an indictment which charged that Jessie James Reynolds sold or transferred cocaine, a schedule II controlled substance, to Robert Hooker as an habitual offender defined by Section 99-19-81 of the Mississippi Code (Rev.1994), Reynolds was tried and found guilty by a jury in the First Judicial District of Harrison County. Although Section 99-19-81 requires that an habitual offender like Reynolds be sentenced to serve the maximum penalty, which is thirty years imprisonment for the sale or transfer of a schedule II controlled substance, the trial judge relied on the authority of Clowers v. State to sentence Reynolds “to serve TEN (10) YEARS in the custody of the Mississippi Department of Corrections to serve day for day without hope of parole or probation as provided in Section 99-19-81.... ” In this appeal from the trial court’s final judgment and order sentencing him, Reynolds presents but one issue for this Court’s analysis and resolution. We quote Reynolds’s one issue verbatim from his statement of issues required by Rule 28(a)(3) of the Mississippi Rules of Appellate Procedure:

I. WAS THE APPELLANT INEFFECTIVELY REPRESENTED BY COUNSEL AT THE TRIAL BELOW, MANDATING A REVERSAL OF HIS CONVICTION?

From our review of the evidence and events which transpired during the course of Reynolds’s trial and afterwards, we affirm the trial court’s final judgment of Reynolds’s conviction of the sale of cocaine and its sentence imposed on Reynolds.

FACTS

¶ 2. The Coastal Narcotics Enforcement Team (CNET) is a combination of personnel from both the Gulfport Police Department and the Mississippi Bureau of Narcotics (MBN). It’s function is to enforce Mississippi’s controlled substances laws. At approximately 7:55 p.m. on September 13, 1995, Robert Hooker, an undercover agent for MBN assigned to CNET, purchased approximately two grams of crack cocaine for twenty dollars from an African-American male whom Hooker identified as the appellant, Jessie James Reynolds.1 Hooker was sitting beneath the steering wheel in a brown station wagon parked in the parking lot at Cohea’s lounge located on Old Pass Road just west of Broad Avenue in Gulfport when Reynolds approached Hooker and exchanged one rock of crack cocaine for a twenty-dollar bill which Hooker handed to him. The remainder of the facts are related in the manner which is consistent with the State’s evidence on which the jury convicted Reynolds.

¶ 3. Before Hooker had driven the brown station wagon onto the parking lot at Cohea’s lounge, Gary Ponthieux, a nar[502]*502cotics investigator for the City of Gulfport Police Department who was also assigned to CNET, and undercover agent Hooker had planned an evening of conducting what these officers described as “buy bust” operations. A “buy bust” operation is one in which the alleged purveyor of the controlled substance is arrested as quickly as possible after he has sold the controlled substance to the undercover agent. A surveillance, or “take down” team, composed of other law enforcement officers, arrests the seller of the illicit substance when they hear the undercover agent’s command over the undercover agent’s body mike to move into the area and make the arrest. Officer Ponthieux commanded the surveillance team that ultimately arrested Reynolds.

¶ 4. There were several African-American males and perhaps a few African-American females standing in the Cohea’s Lounge parking lot when Hooker parked the station wagon and asked a man “to come up to [his] ear, if he had a twenty.” “Twenty” is the drug culture’s appellation for one rock of crack cocaine. The man approached Hooker, who remained seated beneath the steering wheel, advised Hooker that he had a twenty, and then “walked to the back of [Hooker’s] vehicle and met with another unknown male.” The first male, whom Hooker subsequently identified as Reynolds, returned to the driver’s window and consummated the transaction. After the sale was made, Hooker drove “probably about ten yards east of [the] buy transaction[ ] and ... gave the command for [the] surveillance team to come in and make the arrest.” When Hooker gave the command for the surveillance team to arrest Reynolds, Hooker “gave a description that [the seller] was wearing white socks, gray short pants, and a blue shirt.”

¶ 5. Investigator Ponthieux commanded the surveillance team which moved in to arrest Reynolds based upon Hooker’s description of the seller’s clothing. As Pon-thieux moved in with the surveillance team, he “observed this individual wearing the same clothing description that Agent Hooker had [given him] over the body transmitter” and “detained that individual.” Ponthieux heard Hooker describe the seller as “a male wearing a dark blue T-shirt, short pants.”

¶ 6. Reynolds was standing in front of a car with his hands on its hood when Pon-thieux arrested him. Ponthieux’s search of Reynolds found nothing, but Ponthieux “located a twenty-dollar bill on the ground which was located underneath where Mr. Reynolds was standing in front of the vehicle.” Reynolds “had his feet spread at the time, and the [twenty-dollar bill] was in between his feet a little bit behind him.” Ponthieux was unable to identify further the twenty-dollar bill that he found between Reynolds’s feet because, as Pon-thieux later testified, “There was an error on my part in failing to make a notation of the serial numbers on the twenty-dollar bill that was issued to Agent Hooker.”

¶ 7. Agent Hooker had stopped his vehicle immediately after he ordered the surveillance team to arrest the man he described as “wearing white socks, gray short pants, and a blue shirt,” and returned on foot to the scene of the illicit transaction in time to find that the surveillance team had indeed detained the man who had sold him the rock of crack cocaine for twenty dollars. Agent Hooker then tried to identify the second man whom Hooker had observed handing the rock to Reynolds when Reynolds stepped to the rear of Hooker’s vehicle. Although Hooker instructed members of the surveillance team to detain Chris Harper because Hooker thought that Harper might have been the second suspect, Hooker was unable to identify Harper as the supplier of the rock which Reynolds had sold to him. However, during their detention of Harper, members of the surveillance team ordered Harper to pull down his pants, after which they searched Harper. Harper had no controlled substances in his clothing or otherwise on his person; hence the officers released Harper.

[503]*503¶ 8. After the officers had arrested Reynolds, they took him to the Harrison County detention facility where his clothing was relinquished and inventoried by Harrison County deputies. Reynolds’s picture, or mug shot, was also taken at the detention center. Reynolds signed a personal property form which contained descriptions of his watch, ring, one pair of gray pants, one blue hat, one black shirt, one brown shoe, and one blue belt. Reynolds did not sign that part of the form intended for his certification “that the personal property listed above is all of the property [he] had in [his] possession at the time of admission.” No date appears on the personal property form. On May 2, 1996, Reynolds was transferred with the status of trustee from the Harrison County detention center to the Harrison County work center, where he remained until October 23, 1996, when he was returned to the detention center to await trial on the charge for which he was convicted in this case.

II. TRIAL

¶ 9.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
736 So. 2d 500, 1999 Miss. App. LEXIS 153, 1999 WL 185837, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/reynolds-v-state-missctapp-1999.