By Krystal Smalley
ksmalley@wbcowqel.com
The Crawford County Prosecutor’s Office cleared one hurdle in its drug trafficking case against Tyler Ward Monday afternoon.
Crawford County Common Pleas Court Judge Sean Leuthold denied a motion to suppress filed by defense attorney Joel Spitzer. Though Spitzer argued that the law enforcement officers involved in a drug trafficking investigation were “overly suggestive” in their attempt to identify the suspect through a Facebook photo, Leuthold ruled that the prosecution met the burden of reliability.
Chris Heydinger, a detective with the Crawford County Sheriff’s Office, said the case began when they received information from a confidential informant about a possible upcoming drug deal. According to Heydinger, the informant was to buy one gram of heroin for $100 from Tiffany Quaintance, along with some pills. Over texts and phone calls, the informant reported that Quaintance would be arriving with her boyfriend for the transaction.
Testifying in court, Heydinger said he mobilized other law enforcement officers to assist and searched their source for contraband before installing a wire on the informant.
Heydinger and county probation officer Eric Bohach dropped the informant off near Cobey Park in Galion and then took up point in the Dollar General parking lot to monitor the audio through the informant’s wire. Detective Ed Rieke and Major Chad Filliater took up position on the west side of the park.
Heydinger testified that the informant called Quaintance, but a male answered the call and told the informant what type of car to look for. Once the informant spotted the dark Pontiac Bonneville, the informant approached for the buy and spoke to the male, who identified himself as “Tyler.”
“The CI (confidential informant) did a very good job,” Heydinger said about the informant gathering information to identify the man they suspected was Quaintance’s boyfriend.
Once the vehicle left, the informant returned to Heydinger and Bohach, who obtained a photograph after sleuthing through Quaintance’s and, subsequently, Ward’s Facebook page due to their relationship status. Heydinger said that after showing a photo to the informant, it was confirmed the male the informant met up with was Ward.
Rieke and Filliater testified to seeing the Pontiac leave the park. The two deputies eventually found themselves directly across an intersection from the car and clearly observed the male in the driver’s seat. They followed the vehicle through Galion to the county line before it passed into Richland County. Upon returning to Galion, Rieke and Filliater both confirmed that a photo provided to them was the male in the car.
In Spitzer’s cross examination, he focused on Heydinger failing to provide a proper photo lineup when seeking an ID of the male, and on Rieke and Filliater not always having a clear line of sight on the vehicle when it was at the park. In his closing argument, Spitzer said the informant never gave a physical description of Ward to the detectives because the informant was never given a chance. He also indicated that the photo provided for identification was “overly suggestive” to being Ward.
Assistant prosecutor Rob Kidd, however, argued that the identification was still reliable even if it did not follow the photo lineup procedure.
Leuthold acknowledged there was no question that the failure to provide a proper photo lineup was a statutory violation, but, he cautioned, it was not a constitutional violation. Despite that, Leuthold noted the short amount of time between the transaction and the identification, along with the reliability of the identifications by Heydinger, Rieke, and Filliater.
“There’s a difference between a CI and two trained police officers,” Leuthold said. He added that even without an out-of-court identification, each witness would still be able to ID the suspect in court.
“We’d like to have (a photo lineup) in every case,” Leuthold said, “but more and more cases are going to be done in this manner . . . In today’s world with today’s technology, it just makes sense (to use the internet).”
With the motion to suppress denied, Ward’s jury trial is set for Feb. 9. Ward is currently charged with two counts of felony 4 drug trafficking and three counts of felony 5 drug trafficking.
Editor’s note: Detective Ed Rieke’s name was incorrectly spelled in the original article. It has since been corrected.