Jury finds man guilty of drug dealing

PALMER — A local man has been found guilty of 14 felony charges of possessing with intent to sell a laundry list of drugs.

It took the jury all of an afternoon Friday to convict Kiel Cavitt, 23, who was on trial for the second half of last week.

Cavitt was arrested last year after Alaska State Troopers searched his rented home, turning up 10 morphine pills, 14 ecstasy pills, nine grams of hashish, 32 marijuana plants, 23.5 grams of psychedelic mushrooms and a sheet of eight tabs of LSD.

Cavitt’s attorney, Craig Condie, argued at trial that Cavitt wasn’t the drug dealer prosecutors made him out to be.

“Kiel Cavitt is a little fish accused of being a big shark,” Condie said. “He’s a small-time marijuana dealer with an addiction to hard drugs.”

Drug investigators testified at trial that judging by the amount of drugs Cavitt had on hand and how they were packaged, they were fairly certain Cavitt intended to sell them.

Not so fast, Condie argued. Cavitt, a patron of Costco who knows the money-saving value of buying in bulk, was simply buying drugs in bulk to support his habit. His marijuana grow was only profitable after harvested, providing for lump sums of money Cavitt would turn around and spend on drugs to feed his habit.

As evidence, he pointed to the fact that Cavitt’s rented house was not finished, that Cavitt himself was installing a lot of the sheetrock. And he pointed out that Cavitt was also working a low-wage job at a local pizza shop.

If Cavitt is such a big-time drug dealer, “Why is he working a low-wage job? Why is he living in an unfinished house?” Condie asked.

Kerry Corliss, the prosecutor in the case, wasn’t buying it. She put the value of Cavitt’s drugs at upward of $10,000 – a number Condie disputed but did not counter with a figure of his own.

Corliss poured scorn on any theory that Cavitt was a working-class drug addict, pointing to evidence Cavitt owned a nice snowmachine and had poker parties with quantities of cash he ran through an electric money counter.

“This was a virtual drug store. You might as well hang a sign above the door that says ‘Cavitt Pharmacy,’” Corliss said.

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.