INVESTIGATION OF DEA SHOOTING FULL OF SURPRISES

The drug dealing case against Jason Temple boiled down to this: 61/2
hours after a drunken Drug Enforcement Administration agent shot
Temple, Hampton police found 1.4 grams of cocaine and 23 grams of
marijuana on the floorboard of Temple's truck and digital scales under
his driver's seat.

Trouble was, when agent Joseph Armento opened fire on him Jan. 14,
Temple was not a suspect in a DEA investigation. Temple had been in
his truck a total of six seconds in the 12 hours before the cops
discovered the dope. During the same period, Temple's roommate and
another friend also had been in the truck. Furthermore, Temple's truck
sat for five hours unlocked in the parking lot outside Rooney's Grille
& Bar before Armento shot Temple.

Hampton General District Judge Pat Patrick's decision Tuesday to throw
out the two felony drug dealing charges against Temple was a
no-brainer. Commonwealth's Attorney Linda Curtis' announcement that
she probably will not seek a direct indictment of Temple by the grand
jury was no surprise either. Volumes of case law establish that
ownership of a vehicle does not by itself prove possession of any
illegal items inside.

Meanwhile, the prosecutor's office offered a scenario preposterously
reminiscent of something cooked up by O.J. Simpson's defense team:
Temple carried the drugs out of Rooney's in a bag and was trying to
get away after Armento accosted him. To legally establish possession,
the prosecution wanted Patrick to believe that in six seconds Temple
climbed into his truck, placed his drugs on the floorboard, started
the truck and backed it up 10 or 15 feet before being struck in the
chest by a bullet.

With apologies to Johnnie Cochran: If it doesn't make sense,
it's not an offense.

Legally, the dismissal of the charges against Temple was a slam
dunk.

Logically, however, Temple's preliminary hearing raised more troubling
questions about the Hampton Police Department's handling of a very
sensitive and controversial crime.

The drug dealing charges against Temple seemed too convenient a
diversion in a case where the real offender is a federal drug agent
who got drunk, accosted three young men without provocation and then
shot two of them after one drew a gun. The fellow who drew the gun,
Joey Turk, already has been convicted of brandishing a firearm.
Because Turk drew first, Armento was not charged for wounding him,
even though Turk had placed his gun on the hood of Temple's truck and
was unarmed when Armento's bullet struck.

The self-defense theory offered by Hampton police in Turk's wounding
was a stretch, but believable. The drug charges against Temple always
seemed off the wall. The source of the drugs in Temple's truck has
been a matter of intrigue since they were discovered lying in plain
view six hours after the shooting. When he emptied the 13 rounds in
his government-issued 9mm semiautomatic pistol, Armento had no
professional interest in Temple. Armento was mad because he had been
thrown out of Rooney's with two other agents for acting drunk and
disorderly. Then, he was angry that Temple and two friends had dared
to look at him and his fellow G-men as they fumed in the parking lot.

The confrontation was never about drugs, and Tuesday's hearing only
added to the mystery of how it got to be. The evidence showed that
marijuana and cocaine were found in Temple's truck in a purple
velveteen bag advertising Crown Royal Canadian whiskey. The amount of
drugs was small enough to be considered for personal use. But because
the drugs inside the velveteen bag were packaged in several plastic
baggies, police decided somebody intended to sell them.

Who that somebody was is anybody's guess. Unfortunately, the hearing
did nothing to disprove conspiracy theorists who wonder if someone
with the DEA planted the drugs in order to protect Armento. Testimony
that the cops found a digital scale of the type used to measure drugs
under the front seat seemed to make the conspiracy theory more
tenuous. After all, it takes a lot longer to stick a scale under a
seat than it takes to drop a bag of dope on a floorboard.

At the same time, testimony by Temple's brother revealed that police
may not have controlled the crime scene as securely as they claim. A
Hampton officer, who kept a crime scene log, testified Tuesday that
only police and medics were admitted inside the crime scene tape in
the hours after the shooting. But Adam Temple testified that he came
to the crime scene around 6 a.m. and walked to his brother's truck
unchallenged by police.

Adam Temple testified that he startled two crime scene technicians
examining the truck. They told him angrily that he couldn't be there
and ordered him to move outside the yellow crime scene tape that
marked off the area of the shooting.

One of the technicians came to him later to apologize "for snapping at
me," Adam Temple testified.

An objection by assistant Commonwealth's Attorney James Gochenour kept
Temple from testifying what else the technician told him. After the
hearing, Jason Temple's lawyer, Robert Boester, explained that the
crime scene technician told Adam that "she had some doubt that the
crime scene had been properly maintained."

That conversation came as news to Curtis, when she was contacted in
her office after Jason Temple's hearing.

"This is the first I've heard of it," Curtis said. "Obviously, I have
to check it out."

She should check thoroughly. This is not the first gaffe that caught
the prosecutor unaware. She didn't realize that police failed to seize
the weapons of all DEA agents at the scene of the shooting. She also
didn't realize that an HPD forensics expert could name the makes of
only three of the six guns he eventually collected or that he sniffed
the barrel of only one gun to see if it had been recently fired .

Each new revelation chips away at credibility and reveals what's at
stake here. The commonwealth's upcoming prosecution of Joseph Armento
will only be as good as the investigation that supports it. If the
holes grow any larger or more plentiful, it may be time for an outside
agency to scrutinize police conduct in this case as zealously as the
cops seem to have investigated its victims.

- - Jim Spencer can be reached at 247-4731 or by e-mail at
jlspencer@dailypress.com Or Talk Back to Jim Spencer at
http://dailypress.com/columnists/spencer.htm