Just one week after a Carter County man pled guilty to four counts of selling methamphetamine, he found himself behind bars once again after police said he was involved in another drug deal involving meth.
Officers of the Elizabethton Police Department arrested Dallas James Hartley Jr., 53, 116 Hidden Oaks Drive, Johnson City, and charged him with the sale of Schedule II drugs and violation of the Drug Free School Zone law.
Hartley appeared in Carter County General Sessions Court for arraignment on Wednesday morning. Judge Keith Bowers Jr. appointed the Public Defender’s Office to represent Hartley and scheduled him to return to court on July 19.
When Bowers learned Hartley had pled guilty to four counts of the sale of Schedule II drugs (meth) in Criminal Court on June 7 and received a sentence of 6 months in jail, which he is scheduled to begin serving in November, along with 4 years and 6 months of probation through the Tennessee Department of Corrections, Bowers increased Hartley’s bond in the new case from $15,000 to a $25,000 corporate bond. When a bond is set as a corporate bond, the person must go through a professional bonding agency in order to post bond and be released from jail. Property cannot be put up against a corporate bond to secure someone’s release from jail.
The new charge against Hartley stems from an investigation by the Elizabethton Police Department’s VICE unit into drug activity. According to court documents, on June 10 undercover officers with the Elizabethton Police department conducted a controlled narcotics purchase with a confidential informant. The confidential informant picked up Dallas Hartley Jr. from his residence at 116 Hidden Oaks Drive and drove to a home at 162 Daniel Lane, where Hartley exited the vehicle and purchased two baggies containing a clear crystal substance which field tested positive for methamphetamine, an undercover EPD officer said.
“The confidential informant had provided Mr. Hartley with $300 in marked US currency. The substance purchased cost less than what the confidential informant provided Mr. Hartley,” the undercover officer said. “Mr. Hartley handed the substance and the remaining money back to the confidential informant once the informant stopped at the red light of Siam Road and Bluefield Avenue, which is within 1,000 feet of East Side Elementary School.”
A few days later, on June 13, members of the Elizabethton Police Department’s Special Response Team along with undercover officers executed a search warrant at the home on Daniel Lane and the resident there, Bobby Joe Wilson, 48, was subsequently arrested on multiple drug charges as a result of items found during the search of the home. Officers charged Wilson with maintaining a dwelling where drugs are manufactured or sold, possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony, two counts of possession of Schedule II drugs, possession of Schedule III drugs, three counts of possession of a legend drug without a prescription, possession of Schedule IV drugs, possession of Schedule VI drugs, possession of drug paraphernalia and the sale of Schedule II drugs.