CHARLESTON, W.Va. - A federal jury sitting in Charleston returned a guilty verdict today in the trial of a Kanawha County woman for distributing methamphetamine and conspiring to distribute at least 50 grams of methamphetamine.
“Project Charleston is working," said United States Attorney Mike Stuart. “We have removed hundreds and hundreds of grams of meth from our city. In this case, more than 150 grams of methamphetamine were recovered in Charleston as a result of this operation. We are working with a sense of urgency to throw the drug dealers in prison and away from our families. West Virginia has paid too high a price due to the greed of those that prey on our communities. I want to commend the work of my prosecutors and MDENT officers for their work in this case. We are pleased that as a result of this verdict Charleston’s West Side will have one less meth dealer peddling poison on city streets."
On June 18, 2018, Juanita Carrie Haynes, 54, of Charleston, sold about 3.5 grams of methamphetamine to a confidential informant. Based in part on that controlled purchase, police acquired a search warrant for the residence where the sale occurred. Officers executed that warrant on July 3, 2018, and recovered over 150 grams of methamphetamine.
Over the course of two days of testimony, witnesses for the United States described the extent of Haynes’ methamphetamine sales, most of which occurred out of a trailer located on Sissonville Road in Charleston. At the conclusion of the trial, the jury convicted Haynes on one count of distributing methamphetamine on June 18, 2018, and one count of conspiring to distribute more than fifty grams of methamphetamine in June and July of 2018.
Haynes faces a minimum of sentence of five years and a maximum sentence of forty years in prison when she is sentenced on May 31, 2019.
Haynes was one of several individuals arrested in November 2018 as a result of a long-term investigation into a drug trafficking organization on Charleston’s West Side.
The Metropolitan Drug Enforcement Network Team (MDENT) conducted the investigation. Assistant United States Attorneys Monica D. Coleman and Matt Davis are in charge of the prosecution and tried the case before a federal jury. United States District Judge John T. Copenhaver, Jr., presided over the trial.
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Source: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the United States Attorneys
