Two truck drivers who served two and a half months’ time in an Arkansas prison on charges of transporting narcotics have now been proven innocent.
On May 8th, truck drivers Gale Griffin and her husband Wendell Harvey were stopped by police while driving through Fort Chaffee, Arkansas.
The truck driving couple who had been transporting military explosives for years with top security clearance and no criminal background believed that they had nothing to worry about when police searched their vehicle.
But when officers pulled out three small bags containing a white substance, they suspected that the couple was transporting drugs. Harvey, a former police officer, told officers that it was baking soda. But when officers tested the substance, it read positive for cocaine.
Chuck Bowen with Fort Chaffee Police explained, “We tested it three different times. We got a positive conclusion each time we tested.”
That’s when police told them, “You have over $3,000 in cocaine.”
Griffin tried to attest to their innocence when she told the officer, “I’ve never had two nickels to rub together, are you crazy?” The officer responded with “I’ve never had two nickels to rub together either, but now I’m the owner of your truck.”
The couple was sent to prison, and their truck was confiscated.
Their bail was set at $10,000 – a price they couldn’t pay. They spent the next two and half months behind bars.
Griffin explained, “It was just crawling with bugs — it was unbelievably cold, blasting, blasting cold air. For the first three or four weeks, I just shivered. I didn’t have any socks.”
Harvey added, “I felt cut off from reality; it felt very strange — someplace that doesn’t feel like America to me.”
But eventually, the truth came out when the state of Arkansas conducted a lab test with a 100% accuracy. The test came back negative, meaning the couple had never transported drugs to begin with.
The injustice was caused in part by the $2 field test that most law enforcement use called the Scott Reagent Field Test—a test that is infamous for false readings.
Greg Parrish with the Arkansas Public Defender’s Office explained, “They are not infallible; they are subject to misreading.”
In fact, when authorities in Las Vegas re-examined field tests from 2010-2013, 33% were found to have been false positives. According to KUTV, studies have concluded that over 100,000 people are convicted on drug charges as a result of these tests every year.
Salt Lake County Prosecutor Sim Gill noted, “If the prosecution is going to move forward, we are going to insist on that it has a lab test or a [toxicology] review is done that will actually confirm that the substance in the field is what the officer believed it to be.”
Harvey and Griffin were released from prison and just recently got their truck back, which they claim has endured major damage. They also are facing financial and professional problems as they are still waiting to have their security clearance reinstated before they can work again.