State Supreme Court overrules trial order

• By JAMES MINTON
• Advocate Baker - Zachary bureau
• Published: Jul 3, 2009 - Page: 4B

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The state Supreme Court reversed a lower court ruling ordering a new trial for a man convicted of cocaine possession, a conviction that East Feliciana sheriff’s deputies and prosecutors say indirectly led to a slaying in the village of Wilson.

Twentieth Judicial District Attorney Sam D’Aquilla said DeMarcus K. Hollins, 24, was “one of the big players” in drug trafficking in Wilson and other parts of the parish.

“We were trying to concentrate on some of the big guys in Wilson, and we finally got DeMarcus when he was coming through Slaughter. He had a lot of street smarts,” D’Aquilla said.

Dwayne Wheeler, then a Slaughter police officer, stopped Hollins on La. 19 on Oct. 24, 2005, when Wheeler noticed that neither Hollins nor his passenger, Jonathan Fields, was using a seat belt, according to opinions from the Supreme Court and state 1st Circuit Court of Appeal.

During Hollins’ December 2006 trial, Fields testified that Hollins handed him a bag of cocaine and told him to run if Officer Wheeler attempted to search him.

Fields fled before he could be searched, but he later told investigators where they could find a bag of drugs he dropped while running. The bag contained 4.22 grams of cocaine.

A jury convicted Hollins of possession of cocaine, and he received a five-year prison sentence in May 2007.

An appellate court panel, in a 2-1 ruling last year, ordered a new trial for Hollins because the trial judge did not give the jury special instructions the defense requested on the use of uncorroborated testimony by an accomplice.

The Louisiana Supreme Court, with Associate Justice Bernette J. Johnson dissenting, overturned the ruling June 26.

The high court’s opinion said juries must be given a special instruction to treat uncorroborated testimony from an accomplice “with great caution,” but the court ruled that Wheeler corroborated Field’s testimony.

A few hours after Hollins was sentenced, the defendant’s house was set on fire, apparently to conceal a burglary, D’Aquilla said.

The next day, Cassandra Webb, of Wilson, and her son, Peter Webb Jr., confronted Marcus Parker, 25, on the street in front of the Wilson municipal building, where Parker was shot to death.

A jury convicted Peter Webb Jr., 21, of second-degree murder last year in Parker’s slaying, and Cassandra Webb, 41, pleaded guilty to accessory after the fact to second-degree murder in April.