DEPUTY CONSTABLE SOLD MARIJUANA, DPS SERGEANT TESTIFIES

Former McLennan County Deputy Constable Kevin Scott Baker sold marijuana to
a police informant at a Bellmead motel in January, a Texas Department of
Public Safety sergeant testified Wednesday.

Baker, 38, is on trial in Waco's federal court on charges of distribution
of less than 50 kilograms of marijuana, conspiracy to distribute marijuana
and aiding and abetting the distribution of marijuana.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Mark Frazier told the jury of seven women and five
men in opening statements Wednesday that he is forced to build his case
against Baker on circumstantial, indirect evidence because the police
informant, a drug user with a long criminal history, died in June from
complications from hepatitis C.

"The sad truth is that the defendant is a cop, a law enforcement officer,
and he sold marijuana for personal gain," Frazier said.

Baker's attorney, Phil Martinez, told jurors that Baker and the informant,
Martha Jo Mahall, were introduced through a mutual friend, adding that
Baker had agreed to loan Mahall $200 because she said she really needed the
money.

As collateral for the loan, Mahall let Baker hold the title to her 1989 van
until she could repay the debt, Martinez said. However, before she could
repay the loan, Mahall got stopped in the van in Comanche County and was
arrested for possession of crack cocaine.

After she got out of jail, she merely met Baker at the Bellmead motel to
repay the money she owed him, Martinez said, adding that Baker had no
marijuana with him when he met her at the motel.

"What better way for someone hooked on crack cocaine to get herself out of
trouble than to say she knows a police officer who deals drugs?" Martinez
asked the jury. "It was an elaborate lie she got herself into."

DPS Sgt. Ricky Feist of Lampasas said he began his investigation of Baker
after he met with Mahall on a routine follow-up interview after her arrest
in Comanche County on Jan. 23. She told him that she knew a man named
"Kevin" who was a "law enforcement officer" in Waco who reportedly had sold
her and her friends marijuana, Feist said.

Before he launched the full-scale undercover investigation, Feist got
Mahall to call Baker on his cell phone to try to arrange drug buy.
Prosecutors played a tape of that conversation, in which Mahall said she
would trade her van for some "weed," and subsequent phone conversations
between the pair for the jury on Wednesday.

On one tape, Baker cautioned Mahall about speaking so freely about drug
deals because he was talking on a cell phone and was afraid the call might
be monitored.

Feist said they set Mahall up in room 106 of the Delta Inn in Bellmead to
try to make the buy. With police video and audio surveillance in place,
Baker drove up to the motel on Jan. 30 in a white Crown Victoria equipped
with emergency lights that he used as a Precinct 8 deputy constable, Feist
said. He sold Mahall $50 worth of marijuana while collecting $150 she owed
him from a previous drug deal, Feist said.

Mahall came out of the motel room with a plastic bag with marijuana in it,
the sergeant said.

Baker worked part-time for Precinct 8 Constable Felix Suarez since December
2002. He also worked as a truck driver.

Prosecution testimony resumes this morning.