FAULKNER COUNTY DRUG CASE OVERTURNED BY APPEALS COURT

LITTLE ROCK -- Seeing a gun in a home two weeks earlier wasn't enough
evidence for the Conway police to justify knocking down the door of a house
they were serving a search warrant on, the state Court of Appeals ruled
Wednesday.

The unanimous court decision reversed drug convictions and a sentence of
six years probation and $5,000 fine against Kisha Ilo of Conway. The court
ordered another hearing in Faulkner County Circuit Court.

Ilo had entered a conditional plea of guilty to possession of marijuana
with intent to deliver, maintaining a drug premises and possession of drug
paraphernalia.

The Conway woman's arrest in 2000 came after a six-week investigation into
alleged drug dealing at her home on Dave Ward Drive, according to the
appeals court decision.

On Jan. 18, 2000, a man identified as George Weatherly was stopped while
driving away from Ilo's home for an equipment violation on his vehicle.
Officers arrested him after finding marijuana in his vehicle.

Police said Weatherly told them he had purchased marijuana at Ilo's house
for about a year and had seen a handgun in the house on at least two
occasions, and as recently as two weeks earlier, according to the Court of
Appeals decision.

The next day, officers sought a search warrant for Ilo's house, citing
Weatherly's statements and observations by officers during their
investigation into drug dealing at the woman's home over six weeks.

The affidavit for the search warrant asked that the knock-and-announce
rule, which requires officers to knock on the door and announce their
presence with a search warrant, be waived for the safety of the officers
involved. They based their request on Weatherly's statement that he saw a
weapon in the home.

Later that day, police officers went to Ilo's home and rammed the front
door. The occupants, including Ilo, were arrested, and the house was
searched and evidence seized.

Ilo moved to suppress the evidence found in the house, but the Circuit
Judge David Lee Reynolds denied the request. Ilo's appeal followed.

In the ruling, Judge John B. Robbins said knowledge of a weapon in a
residence has in the past justified execution of a no-knock warrant.

However, Robbins, said, the appeals court agreed with Ilo that the
information regarding the presence of a handgun was "too remote in time to
predicate a fear that such a handgun will continue to be present and
endanger officers, absent any other compelling facts to suggest otherwise."

"The evidence, at its strongest, suggested that Weatherly saw a gun at the
house on two occasions, most recently two weeks before the day his car was
stopped," Robbins wrote. "Weatherly gave no indication that a gun was
present, however, when he was in the house on the day just prior to the
request for a search warrant and its execution."

Judges Terry Crabtree and Andree Layton Roaf sided with Robbins on the opinion.