Jury acquits jail officer accused of assisting drug dealers

Charles A. Stocker, 50, a corrections officer at an Aberdeen jail, has been acquitted on claims that he provided information to southwest Washington drug traffickers.

JOSHUA TRUJILLO/credit

"McNeil Island is located in Puget Sound in the northwestern part of Pierce County. The island was named for William McNeill, captain of a Hudson's Bay Company steamer. In 1869, the U.S. Army Engineers built a jail on McNeil Island. The facility became a federal prison in 1909 and was transferred to the state of Washington in 1981. At that time it was renamed the McNeil Island Corrections Center. Prior to its closing on April 1, 2011, it was the last remaining island prison in the country. This photo, taken early in 1939, shows the prison farm and buildings at the McNeil Island Penitentiary. At that time, prisoners worked the surrounding farmland, producing food for the prison and prison employees." -MOHAI. Photo courtesy MOHAI, Seattle P-I Collection, image number PI25102.
Courtesy MOHAI

Amanda Owens, who was raised on McNeil Island, poses for a photo in a cell during the closing ceremony for McNeil Island Corrections Center on Thursday, March 3, 2011. Her father was a corrections officer on the island from 1983 to 2000. Many families lived on the island, which had a school and other elements of a community. McNeil Island housed inmates since 1875 and in 1904 became a federal prison. It eventually became part of the Washington State prison system and was closed due to budget cuts. The remaining inmates were distributed to other Washington facilities.Joshua Trujillo

This photo shows the Oregon State Penitentiary in the 1880s. The first incarnation of this jail was the Oregon Territorial Jail, built in Oregon City, in 1842. When that jail burned down in 1846, Oregon used local jails to house prisoners until the state legislature OK'd funding for a new one in 1851. Initially, the prison was to be built in Portland on Front Street, but the state had bought two lots -- one on each side of the street -- and the city refused to vacate and reroute the street to make way for the prison. After temporary housing was provided for prisoners in Portland, a new site was chosen in Salem, and construction began in 1854.
Photo and background courtesy Oregon Department of Corrections

The Oregon Boot, officially called the Gardner Shackle, was Oregon State Penitentiary Warden J.C. Gardner's solution to keep prisoners around to build themselves a new prison. The prisoners were to build a new prison, but there was nothing but shacks to house them during the construction, so Gardner hatched the idea for what came to be known as the Oregon Boot. The device was roughly a 28-pound iron or lead weight that was clamped around the prisoner's ankle and attached to a frame than went under their heel. The idea was that its weight -- only on one leg -- made balance very difficult, thus making escape nearly impossible for the inmates. The device was so successful that Gardner made the prisoners keep wearing it even after they moved into the new prison. Eventually, however, the damage the boots did to prisoner's ankles was too much -- it often caused terrific pain after long wear and would put permanent dents into prisoners' ankle bones. The constant wearing was discontinued in 1878, but it was used for transporting criminals nationwide by the turn of the century. Their use was still hard on the people who wore them for even short periods of time and by 1939, they were phased out. (Background courtesy offbeat Oregon, photo from 1922 Popular Science magazine).
Offbeat Oregon/Popular Science

The Old Montana State Prison in Deer Lodge, Montana, opened in 1871, with room for 14 prisoners. Within a month of opening, the then-territorial prison was overcrowded and would continue to be until it came under state control in 1890, under the leadership of Frank Conley. As it happened, Conley's time as warden (1890 to 1921) would be the smoothest years of the prison's operation, even if Conley did take advantage of his position through use of prison and state resources and labor for personal gain (he was removed from his wardenship in 1921 after a trial in which he could not be convicted of anything thanks to a vague contract between himself and the state). The prison, built right along Main Street on the south end of town, closed in 1979 and a new facility was opened nearby. This photo shows the sandstone exterior wall that was built in the 1890s by prisoners under Conley's direction. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.
Wikimedia Commons

The WA Clark Theatre was built on the old Montana State Prison grounds in 1920, funded by a donation from copper king William A. Clark. It served as entertainment for both prisoners and members of the local Deer Lodge community. It also served as a valuable tool to punish prisoners for bad behavior. The theater remained in service until it was put out of action by a fire in 1975. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.
Wikimedia Commons

A corrections officer at an Aberdeen jail, accused of providing information to southwest Washington drug traffickers, has been acquitted.

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Charles A. Stocker, 50, was acquitted Wednesday following a seven-day jury trial at U.S. District Court in Tacoma. Stocker had been accused of providing information about ongoing investigations to drug dealers.

Agents with the FBI and Drug Enforcement Administration launched an investigation in March 2016 following a tip from Grays Harbor County narcotics detectives. Federal investigators were told that Stocker passed sensitive information to drug traffickers in Aberdeen and elsewhere.

Stocker was alleged to have tipped two felons to investigations targeting them. Other allegations initially made against Stocker were not put to the jury.

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Questioned in July 2016, Stocker denied passing information to inmates.

“I have never told them about anything,” Stocker told investigators, according to prosecutors’ statements. “I don’t know anything about controlled buys.”

Stocker’s attorney, Federal Public Defender Colin Fieman, did not respond to a request for comment Wednesday. A U.S. Attorney’s Office spokesperson declined to comment.

Stocker was initially charged with misprision of a felony, a 109-year-old criminal violation meant to punish those who take actions to conceal a serious crime, as well as aiding and abetting drug trafficking. The misprision counts were withdrawn after Stocker’s attorneys moved to have them dismissed.

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Writing the court in August, Fieman and Assistant Federal Public Defender John Carpenter argued that the government could not show Stocker was concealing a crime. Prosecutors would need to do so if they hoped to prove misprision.

At trial, Stocker was accused only of aiding two low-level drug dealers in their operations. His attorneys had asked that U.S. District Judge Benjamin Settle throw out that count.

In a motion for acquittal filed Monday, Stocker’s attorneys argued that prosecutors failed to show that Stocker knew of the conspiracy he was accused of aiding.

At trial, one of the drug dealers testified that he never discussed his crimes with Stocker, in part because Stocker was “law enforcement,” the public defenders said in a statement to the court. According to the defense attorneys, the man testified “that he got ‘bits’ of information from Stocker only by ‘weaseling’ them from him, and that he got ‘tired of telling’ the government about Stocker’s lack of involvement in the alleged conspiracy.”

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The other dealer, who was romantically involved with the first, testified that Stocker told her investigators were listening to their phone calls, according to the defense attorneys’ statement. But the woman also explained that she didn’t interact further with Stocker or involve him in a drug conspiracy. She apparently kept selling to a police informant after that interaction.

“There is no other evidence that might even arguably be sufficient to establish Mr. Stocker’s knowledge of the conspiracy,” the public defenders opined.

Settle had not ruled on the motion for acquittal before the jury returned its verdict Wednesday. Jurors acquitted Stocker on the single count of the indictment, aiding and abetting drug trafficking.

Stocker, who has been on administrative leave from the city jail since his arrest, had not been jailed.

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SeattlePI senior editor Levi Pulkkinen can be reached at 206-448-8348 or levipulkkinen@seattlepi.com. Follow Levi on Twitter at @levipulk. Find more from Levi here on his author page.