Rebecca Martin of rural Mountain Home, who was sentenced to 20 years probation in April after pleading guilty to a long string of drug trafficking charges, has now been locked up again facing charges she violated the terms and conditions of her probation handed down less than two months ago.
The 53-year-old Martin was arrested June 12th for violating probation.
She is alleged to have failed a drug test for the third time early last month, and with failing to report for a substance abuse assessment June 11th. She could face prison time based on the violations.
In addition to being placed on probation, the state was authorized to seize her home located along County Road 30.
According to the probable cause affidavits in the cases in which she was sentenced, investigators say drug-related activity has taken place at the residence for nearly two decades.
It is fairly common in charges lodged against drug buyers and sellers that the state will file motions to seize assets deemed involved in — or derived from — drug trafficking. In most cases, the property involves cash — sometimes thousands of dollars — as well as vehicles and firearms. It it less common to seize a residence as in the Martin case.
According to electronic records maintained by the Baxter County Assessor’s Office, the Martin home is listed as a 1,200 square-foot-structure. It is described as a two-story log house at the end of a circle driveway.
Another twist in the case is that Martin announced in open court as her cases wound through the system she had used part of her $200,000 winnings from the Arkansas Scholarship Lottery to help retire the debt on the house which has now been forfeited to the state.
Her criminal records contain information concerning a number of controlled drug buys, many of which were allegedly made from the residence on County Road 30.
In early May last year, for example, police used a confidential informant to purchase approximately 26 grams of methamphetamine from Martin. It was reported that when the transaction between the informant and Martin took place, there were at least three other “customers” present at the home. They had reported giving Martin “front money” so she should could make a substantial purchase of methamphetamine, valued at approximately $5,000, in an out-of-state city. They had reportedly given Martin the “front money” and were at the residence to collect the “product”.
Prosecutors have been hampered in attempts to bring some of Martin’s cases to court. Three cases were deemed unwinnable and charges dismissed after courts ruled evidence against Martin had been illegally obtained, and could not be used against her.
Mountain Home attorney Norman Wilber represented Martin in the evidence suppression hearings. In his brief supporting the motion to suppress evidence gathered during a March 25, 2015 search of Martin’s home, Wilber wrote that investigators “should be forced to comply with rules governing the preparations of probable cause affidavits seeking search warrants.”
If lessons regarding those rules are not learned and practiced as a matter of course, Wilber told the court, investigators would continue to put unwinnable cases in the hands of prosecutors since the state could not proceed where a majority of incriminating evidence had to be thrown out.
During Martin’s sentencing, 14th Judicial District Prosecuting Attorney David Ethredge said Martin’s lengthy probation period would permit her to be more closely supervised which has now proven true less than two months after her original sentence was handed down when she was booked into the county jail on the petitions to revoke her probation.
Martin is being held without bond in the Baxter County Detention Center.
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