JUDGE THROWS OUT DRUG EVIDENCE, KILLING CASE AGAINST TWO PHILA. MEN

The two men indeed were carrying crack cocaine as they walked down a
Johnstown street in the fall.

But a federal judge says he doesn't believe a Johnstown police officer's
claim that he stopped them because he thought one of the men looked like a
curfew violator.

Instead, Judge D. Brooks Smith says the case looks like the officer's
attempt to justify a groundless hunt for drugs. And with that, Smith threw
out the drug evidence Thursday and, in effect, killed a federal case that
included a three-count drug indictment handed down in April against
Philadelphia residents Kevin Lamar Wilson, 22, and Lawrence Brown, 19.

The ruling said that veteran Johnstown police officer Scott Haymaker
waffled during an evidence suppression hearing last month, and accused him
of exaggerating when he told of the defendants turning "extremely nervous,"
sitting wide-eyed and shaking when police promised a strip search shortly
after their arrest.

"My immediate impression was that this testimony was exaggerated," Smith,
sitting in Johnstown, wrote in his suppression order. "The impression was
consistent with the look of disbelief I observed on the faces of the
defendants as Haymaker concluded his aspect of the testimony."

Wilson and Brown were arrested at about 1 a.m. Nov. 2, near a Johnstown bar
that police say is a center of the local drug trade. The arrest began,
according to testimony, when Haymaker pulled his cruiser to the curb,
stopped the pair as they walked by and asked, according to Wilson, if they
were "slinging dope."

They denied it. Neither tried to run.

But Brown was packing a walkie-talkie -- commonly used by local drug
traffickers, police say -- as well as a wad of cash and crack cocaine
stashed in his underwear. Wilson, too, was carrying crack, police say.

The problem lies with how the stop occurred in the first place.

Haymaker testified that Brown, who was 19, looked "very, very young,"
probably was less than 18 and breaking Johnstown's 10 p.m. curfew.

Smith, though, said that Haymaker's actions, including asking whether they
were slinging dope, indicate that he was looking without probable cause for
drugs, not trying to size up a curfew violation.

"Here, the only information known before the stop was that these two young
African-American males were walking down the street in a high drug
trafficking area late at night," Smith wrote.

With that ruling, Smith said he saw no need to address defense lawyer
Arthur McQuillan's challenge that Johnstown's curfew ordinance is, among
other things, "broad and over-reaching."

Federal prosecutors could not be reached for response.