Police had seized cooking apparatus, drug paraphernalia and chemicals from the couple's motel room, motor home

January 8, 2006

MARY AMES\Frontiersman reporter PALMER - Defense attorneys are trying to suppress evidence gleaned in a search of a vehicle and motel rooms once used by Willow couple charged with maintaining a meth lab in two rooms at the Sleepy Willow Inn last summer.

Mary Porter, 45, and Chris Hartman, 43, are charged with three counts of second-degree misconduct involving a controlled substance, one count of third-degree MICS, two counts of fourth-degree MICS and one count of second-degree misconduct involving weapons. Hartman's attorney, Marcy McDannel, argued that affidavits used to get the search warrants were missing from court files, and so there was no basis for police getting those warrants.

A hearing about the matter that took place Friday before Palmer Superior Court Judge Beverly Cutler is scheduled to continue Thursday.

Employees at the Fred Meyer store in Wasilla saw Hartman buying boxes of Drixoral, isopropyl alcohol and coffee filters - items often used in to manufacture methamphetamine - and notified the Mat-Su Narcotics Unit on June 21, according to testimony by Kyle Young, an Alaska State Trooper investigator.

Young went to the store, he said, and saw Hartman buying the items.

Young watched Hartman get in his car and followed him to the Fred Meyer store in Palmer, he said.

Sgt. Robert Langendorfer, another trooper investigator, went into the store and saw Hartman buying about 40 bottles of tincture of iodine, another substance used in making meth, according to Young.

The troopers then asked Palmer police to stop the vehicle and pick up Hartman on an outstanding warrant and for driving without a valid driver's license, Young said.

He also told the court that at the time of the traffic stop, investigators knew Porter and Hartman had bought 10 boxes of Sudafed within the previous two weeks and he knew he had enough information for a second-degree MICS charge.

About 8 or 9 p.m., investigators got a search warrant in Anchorage for Hartman's room at the Sleepy Willow Inn, because a judge is on duty all night in Anchorage, Young testified.

Anchorage District Magistrate Geoffrey Comfort also issued a search warrant for Hartman's car, Young said.

The search warrant for the motel resulted in the seizure of a meth lab in Hartman's room, according to troopers.

While investigators were inspecting that meth lab, someone in the next room - Porter - fired a gun, the report said.

Investigators talked Porter into putting down her weapon and coming out of the room, the report said, and then they got another search warrant for her room and for a motor home the couple co-owned that was in the parking lot.

Investigators found a second meth lab in Porter's room and meth-related trash in the motor home, the report said. As a result of the search warrants, a large amount of meth lab trash, chemicals, cooking apparatus, waste and byproduct were seized as well as two firearms, methamphetamine, drug paraphernalia, scales and packaging materials, troopers said.

Although the four search warrants were in evidence, the affidavits from investigators requesting the warrants were not in the discovery files.

Young told the court it was most likely an inadvertent clerical error returned affidavits to Anchorage court with no copies in the Palmer court files.

“This is a problem, Judge,” McDannel told the court. “This is brand new and critical information I never had until now.”

Assistant District Attorney Steve Wallace called the missing affidavits an inadvertent failure of discovery.

“This wasn't a deliberate process,” he said, promising to get the affidavits to the defense as quickly as possible.

Cutler continued the hearing, but kept a Jan. 30 trial date scheduled for the couple.