CAPE MAN FOUND GUILTY OF DRUG CHARGES FOLLOWING TRIAL

JACKSON -- Dmitri Bell could spend most of this century in prison after being found guilty of drug charges Wednesday.

Bell, 19, of Cape Girardeau was found guilty of possessing and intending to distribute crack cocaine and marijuana by a Circuit Court jury after two and one-half hours of deliberations, said Lora Cooper, Cape Girardeau County assistant prosecutor.

The two class B felonies carry punishments of five to 30 years in prison.

Bell was also found guilty of resisting arrest, a class D felony punishable by five years in prison. However, as a prior offender, this can be doubled to 10 years.

"He's going to spend more years in jail than he has been alive," Cooper said.

Police officers Brad Smith and Jeffery Bonham told the court they were patrolling Good Hope Street on foot in the early morning hours of June 10 when they noticed a man sleeping in a parked car. Bell was asleep in the passenger's seat with the window rolled down.

Smith said when he looked inside Bell didn't wake up. Smith noticed a bag lying in the palm of the man's hand. It appeared to contain marijuana and crack cocaine, he said. But when the officers tried to wake Bell he continued to sleep.

In the meantime, Sulaymon Moore, a friend of Bell's, came over to the car and tried to wake him, too. Smith then turned his attention to Moore, while Bonham was finally able to wake Bell.

Bonham said he got Bell to his feet and had him facing the car. The officer was holding Bell's hand in one of his own as he reached to pull out his handcuffs.

"At that point Bell decided that he didn't want to be arrested," Cooper said.

Bell ran, and Bonham pursued him.

The chase was cut short when Bonham heard his keys fall out onto the street. Rather than risk having someone pick them up, since several people were out along the street, Bonham ended the chase to go back and retrieve his keys.

With a tip from an informant police later identified Bell as the man in the car and arrested him.

The officers' initial reports only described seeing a man in his 20s, said Christopher Davis, Bell's attorney.

"How closely were the police paying attention?" Davis asked jurors. "A guy wakes up from a dead sleep and runs away."

Davis questioned the motivation of the informant who told police Bell had been in the car. The informant did not appear in court as a witness.

In her closing argument, Cooper said Bonham initially recognized Bell by his face during the arrest but didn't know his name.

The bags that had been in Bell's possession in the car contained seven grams of marijuana and three grams of crack cocaine, said Pam Johnson of the Southeast Missouri Regional Crime Lab. The contents had already been separated into smaller bags, which Cooper said implied that he was planning to sell or deliver them.

Bell will be sentenced in April.

Bell had already been convicted for interfering with arrests during a crowd confrontation with police on Good Hope Street last June. He was sentenced to seven years in prison.

Besides those convictions Bell has yet to be punished for three probation violations, each of which have possible five-year sentences.