PLINTON INQUIRY CALLED 'SLOPPY'

Summit County Sheriff Drew Alexander told a group of pastors
Wednesday that he would have found Charles Plinton not guilty, too,
had he been a juror at the 2004 drug trafficking trial that acquitted
the former University of Akron graduate student.

"We were sloppy in our preparation, and the jury did the right thing
and found him not guilty," Alexander said.

Plinton later took his own life.

After reviewing the controversial case, Alexander determined that
improperly supervised police work contributed to a weak case that
should either have been shored up before trial or dismissed.

Alexander has ordered better supervision and documentation of
undercover drug cases and has purchased better digital recording
equipment because the surveillance recordings in the Plinton case
were too poor to be useful as evidence, according to the sheriff's
report, which was released Wednesday.

However, Alexander maintains the drug unit under his command had
sufficient evidence to charge Plinton, who was accused of selling a
third of an ounce of marijuana to a confidential informant installed
in student housing.

Of the more than 1,360 arrests made by the drug unit since it was
formed in 2001, all have resulted in conviction -- except Plinton's,
which was the only case resulting in an acquittal on all charges,
according to the sheriff's department.

Alexander wouldn't say whether it was possible the investigators had
simply picked the wrong suspect.

"They found him not guilty, and I respect the system," Alexander said.

Despite the acquittal, a university hearing board of three faculty
members and two students decided in a split vote that Plinton was
"responsible" for dealing drugs to a confidential informant in Plinton's dorm.

The university suspended Plinton for a semester and permanently
banned him from student housing. Plinton never returned to UA and on
Dec. 12, took his own life in Pennsylvania at the age of 25.

Local pastors organized after reading Plinton's story and have
pressured the sheriff's department, the Summit County prosecutor and
the University of Akron to account for their roles in the case.

UA President Luis Proenza created a commission to review campus
discipline and law enforcement policies. That group is expected to
make recommendations in August.

Between 2001 and early 2004, law enforcement received more than 200
complaints about illegal drug activity around the UA campus.

The drug unit placed the informant, a felon, in a dorm with the
university's cooperation in 2004. Previous attempts to use undercover
police officers failed because they couldn't spend enough time on
campus to set up drug deals, according to the sheriff's report.

The internal investigation identified several problems with the
Plinton case, focusing on efforts to identify Plinton as the drug
seller and an alleged confession he made to the arresting officer.

Here are those problems:

Reports lacked details and the lead detective did not document that
he showed the confidential informant eight mug shots in an attempt to
identify the person selling him marijuana. Later, the informant was
shown just one photo -- Plinton's UA identification card -- instead
of having to pick that face out of a series of mug shots.

"That should have been a photo array," Alexander said.

The failure of the arresting officer to document an alleged
confession until a week before trial "caused credibility issues
regarding the actions of law enforcement in this matter."

Detectives should have replaced the informant's personal money with
drug unit money to purchase drugs to ensure a clean exchange of
marked bills for drugs. Detectives allowed the informant to keep some
of his own money while making the drug deals.

"Finally, the workload of the detectives and supervisors assigned to
major cases on the (Summit County Drug Unit) diverted attention from
this minor marijuana case. The outcome of this matter underscores the
fact that there are no small cases in law enforcement."

As a result of the Plinton review, Alexander has ordered that "all
cases regardless of size shall be regularly reviewed by supervisors
of the (drug unit)."

Also, drug unit officers involved in undercover operations will be
required to complete a new "master surveillance document" to make
sure they document and initial their observations.

The assistant Summit County prosecutor on the case, Carolyn Mulligan,
said in a letter responding to questions that she never believed the
case against Plinton was strong. But she didn't think it should have
been dismissed and that ultimately, the justice system worked for him.

"I believed the defendant to be guilty, but I was not confident that
we had sufficient evidence for a conviction," wrote Mulligan, who is
no longer with the prosecutor's office. "As it turned out, we did
not. I was not surprised. The jury did the right thing."