Sentence upheld for drug kingpin

The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis has upheld the June 2015 conviction and resulting life sentence, imposed in February, of Demetrius Colbert, a Marianna man accused of being a large-scale cocaine distributor in Marianna and Helena-West Helena in 2010 and 2011.

Colbert, 40, was the only one of four men identified as drug kingpins in the FBI-led Delta Blues investigation to go to trial, the others having pleaded guilty and accepted varying prison terms.

The multiyear, multiagency drug trafficking and public corruption investigation was also conducted by agents of the IRS; the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; and the criminal investigation division of the Arkansas State Police. It resulted in the arrests of more than 70 people, including four law enforcement officers in Phillips and Crittenden counties.

Colbert was convicted of distributing more than 11 pounds of cocaine and wounding an FBI agent during the execution of a search warrant at his home early Oct. 11, 2011. He fired eight rounds from a .40-caliber handgun through his closed front door just after agents outside announced their presence and prepared to enter forcibly. Agent Wendell Cosenza of Virginia was struck in the thigh, and later had surgery to remove the bullet fragments.

Colbert maintained that he was half asleep at the time, didn’t have his glasses on and didn’t know that the people surrounding his house were law enforcement officers. He told U.S. District Judge James Moody Jr., “I think, Judge, if somebody beat on your door at 4 in the morning, I think your reaction would be the same.”

He said he had been robbed six months earlier and was trying to protect his wife and children, who were asleep inside, from a repeat attack.

Agents reported finding more than $400,000, a gun, cocaine residue on the toilet that appeared to be from a sudden flushing, and jewelry worth close to $30,000.