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Home Patrick Swiney The Case Marijuana Smugglers Sentenced Marijuana Smugglers Sentenced
Thursday, 20 July 2006
The following information was gathered tonight from Lexis-Nexis News Wires database and is copied verbatim below.
Note that Hendrix was prosecutor for 22 years; he was convicted in 1983, others were convicted in 1981. Since investigations normally precede convictions by some time and several were convicted in this sting operation its entirely feasible that other investigators (Swiney) were involved between 1973 and 1977.
Copyright 1983 Associated Press
All Rights Reserved
The Associated Press
May 20, 1983, Friday, PM cycle
SECTION: Domestic News
LENGTH: 343 words
HEADLINE: Marijuana Smugglers Sentenced
BYLINE: By GARRY MITCHELL, Associated Press Writer
DATELINE: MOBILE, Ala.
A former district attorney was sentenced today to five years in prison for helping protect a marijuana-smuggling operation in a coastal Alabama county where he was prosecutor for 22 years.
Some 25 residents of Bay Minette, representing a cross-section of the business and legal community,stood with former Baldwin County District Attorney James A. Hendrix at sentencing.
Retired Baldwin County Circuit Judge Telfair Mashburn, acting as spokesman for the group, said, "I am not here today to ask for mercy. Mercy is for the guilty."
Mashburn told U.S. District Judge Emmett Cox that Hendrix's conviction was a "miscarriage of justice."
The government charged that Hendrix, who served as Baldwin County prosecutor from 1959-81, was paid $20,000 to protect the smuggling operation by keeping law officers away from a landing strip.
U.S. Attorney Jeff Sessions asked Mashburn whether he had read the transcript of the trial and the circuit judge said he had not.
"I'm a little bit suspicious of the testimony of convicted felons and what they do to plea-bargain," Mashburn said, referring to the government's key witnesses.
Cox sentenced Hendrix along with three Florida men also convicted in the scheme. They were convicted April 11.
Dale Werhan, former manager of the Pensacola, Fla., airport, received a four-year sentence. Michael Carrigan was sentenced to six years and fined $50,000, and Dennis Benefito also got four years. Both Carrigan, a boat salesman, and Benefito, a housepainter, live in Sarasota.
They were charged with importing marijuana into Baldwin County in 1981 by airplane. Hendrix, 60, said he found himself with "almost a complete loss of words," but he said he was "satisifed with my life."
"If it's the will of court the Almighty that I be sacrificed for the likes of Bobby Stewart and Sam Styron, then so be it," Hendrix said. Stewart, a former sheriff's investigator, and Styron, a crop duster, were convicted of marijuana smuggling in separate cases and provided the testimony necessary for Hendrix's conviction.