Drug Informer Pleads No Contest In Police Search Of Wrong Home

PULASKI VICTIMS SUFFER FLASHBACKS

A second charge will not be prosecuted if Johnny Wayne Sexton pays $760 in
restitution for damage Pulaski police caused to the apartment.

PULASKI - A former police informant pleaded no contest Monday to two
charges of providing false information to law enforcement officials that
resulted in a pre-dawn raid on the apartment of a Pulaski couple.

Johnny Wayne Sexton, 26, got a six-month suspended sentence on one of the
misdemeanor charges. He could have received up to a year in jail and a
$2,500 fine.

The second charge will not be prosecuted if Sexton pays $760 in restitution
for the door broken down by Pulaski police and other damage to the
apartment. He must also be on good behavior for a year.

The trial lasted only a few minutes and consisted of Sexton, his attorney,
Fred Kellerman, and Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Peggy Frank
conferring before General District Court Judge Edward Turner , who approved
the plea bargain.

Shortly afterward, Sexton slipped out the back door of the Pulaski County
Courts Building and outran a TV news cameraman trying to capture him on
videotape.

Sexton gave no reason for having falsely tipped Pulaski police that the
Second Street apartment of William and Geneva Summers was the site of an
illegal drug laboratory.

"No, no statement," his attorney said.

The couple has retained Dublin lawyer Tommy Baker to negotiate for damages
with the town.

"We've been in contact with officials of the town of Pulaski," Baker
confirmed after the trial. He said police may have been misled by Sexton to
obtain a search warrant from a magistrate and break into the apartment. But
he said that does not absolve them of the constitutional responsibility of
the error and its effects.

"I'm still shook up," said Geneva Summers. "When they had a gun in my face,
made me get on the floor ... I was afraid they'd shoot me if I moved."

"Nobody knows the heartache we've been through," said her husband, William
Summers. He said his wife still has flashbacks from the incident. He said
he woke up at 4 that morning and could not get back to sleep.

It was 4 a.m. May 24 when town narcotics officers broke into the back door
of the apartment, speaking in Spanish and forcing the occupants to the
floor at gunpoint. Sexton had given police an affidavit that the people he
had seen making methamphetamine in the apartment spoke Spanish and were
armed.

William Summers said there are some Spanish-speaking people in an apartment
on an upper floor and, when he heard the intruders speaking Spanish, he
thought the neighbors were the ones breaking in.

The police subsequently apologized to the couple.

If Sexton thought this was a joke, William Summers said, he should have
realized how deadly such a situation might become. "I think something
should be done with him," Geneva Summers said.

"We weren't that concerned what happened to Mr. Sexton," Baker said. "They
worked out a plea agreement. ... We had nothing to do with it."

Baker said Sexton would be a party to working out an agreement regarding
damages. If Sexton had pleaded guilty, he could have been made to pay
damages. Instead, he pleaded no contest and admitted that the evidence was
sufficient to convict.

Police said they had used the informant in 14 other felony investigations
and had no reason not to believe him this time.