[420 Girl]

An alleged pattern of mistakes by agents of the 4th Judicial District Drug Task Force is to blame for the ordeal of a Jefferson County man who has filed a $1.5 million lawsuit against a slew of police agencies, according to court records.

Although the criminal charges against him have been dismissed, Wayne Houston Welch claims that he's suffered emotional distress and worsened health problems as a result of the incident and the ensuing negative publicity.

Welch is suing the task force as well as several of the local governments and police agencies that fund and staff it. The task force is comprised of officers pulled from agencies in Sevier, Cocke, Jefferson and Grainger counties.

The task force is already facing at least two lawsuits from other people who were arrested for allegedly dealing drugs but whose charges were later dropped after problems were uncovered in the investigations.

Task force officials couldn't be reached for comment because the agency's public phone number had been disconnected and changed to a private number.

Welch claims that he and his wife - who isn't identified by name in court records - "had made a nice life for themselves in the tranquil rural community of Chestnut Hill" before they fell victim to police incompetence "not seen since the days that Barney Fife terrorized the streets of Mayberry with a single bullet in his pocket," according to the lawsuit filed March 20 in Jefferson County Circuit Court.

On Oct. 11, 2006, their home was swarmed by task force agents and uniformed police officers who spent the next 6 1/2 hours searching their property. When questioned by Welch's wife, one of the agents allegedly replied: "We found marijuana, and we are not going to tell you how much we found or where we found it."

The task force director, Mack Smith, also told Welch the officers had found marijuana, but it soon became clear the officers hadn't "checked the facts that led to the issuance of the search warrant," the lawsuit states.

For instance, the officers demanded to know the location of Welch's "walk-in safe" despite the fact that Welch didn't own a safe, the lawsuit said. When the officers couldn't find it, they allegedly grew frustrated and ransacked the couple's home, destroying an antique cabinet and seizing a 1921 silver dollar and railroad watch that were never returned to them.

The officers eventually left, and Welch was arrested on an indictment in March 2007 accusing him of trafficking in marijuana, the lawsuit said. Welch's attorney, Jonathan Holcomb of Morristown, then investigated the case and was able to persuade a judge to suppress the search warrant, which in turn prompted the state to drop the charges against him.

According to the lawsuit, the search warrant was based largely on the word of a confidential informant who was never videotaped, recorded or photographed with Welch. The lawsuit stressed that the search warrant was suppressed "because it was invalid, not because of some facial defect, but because the factual basis for the search warrant was wholly and negligently lacking."

Welch's attorney, Francis Santore Jr., said that during the discovery process of the criminal case authorities presented marijuana stems and seeds they claimed to have found on the property but no plants. "The stems and seeds could have come anywhere," Santore said, adding that his client lives in a rural area next to the mountains.

Santore said his client will not be making statements to the media.

Welch is a diesel mechanic and, at the time of the raid on their property that ultimately led to his arrest, Welch's wife was employed at Food City.

One of the officers identified in the lawsuit as taking part in the search, Neal Seals, was involved in a drug investigation that led to the arrest of Patty Diane Yates of Morristown in 2007. The charges against her were later dropped because it turned out the agents had misidentified her as a drug dealer.

Seals was assigned to the task force from the Sevierville Police Department but has since left law enforcement for a career in the private sector.

A third person, 44-year-old James Russell Kitts of Seymour, was arrested in a similar case last year that led task force director Smith to issue a formal apology after the charges against him were dropped.

In the Yates and Kitts cases, the investigations were built around the reliability of confidential informants who turned out to be unreliable or who later disappeared.

Mark Victor Shults, a former Sevier County Sheriff's Office deputy who was assigned to the task force, was given a four-year sentence last year for stealing money from both suspects and the task force.


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