PALATKA DAILY NEWS

November 27, 2005

Labor camp trial moved to February

By Randy Lefko

The trial of the owners and employees of an East Palatka farm labor camp has been changed to February, according to court documents. The original court date was to be January, but motions have delayed the trial start date.

Ronald Robert Evans Sr. was indicted Oct. 13 on felony charges of violating numerous sections of the Fair Labor Standards Act and knowingly and willfully making false and fraudulent statements to U.S. Department of Labor Wage and Hour Division investigators. These alleged fraudulent statements referred to how many migrant workers the camp employed, where they were actually working, how they were transported to and from work and using unauthorized drivers to transport them. There is one count on the indictment of unlawfully transporting untaxed cigarettes.

Court documents say Evans owned and operated farms in East Palatka and Newton Grove, N.C.

Evans is named in the indictment on charges of allegedly distributing crack cocaine from the labor farms and violating portions of the Clean Water Act.

Also indicted were Evans’ son, Ronald Robert Evans Jr., plus Jequita Dumbar Evans, Emma Mae Johnson, Eddie Lee Williams, Irvin Sutton and Eugene Sheppard, all employees of the camp, of cocaine possession and distribution charges plus issuing false and fraudulent statements.

The continuance motion by the Evans’ attorney, William Mallory Kent, was filed recently after a motion to release nearly 3,700 pages of discovery material from the state was granted Nov. 18.

Search warrant documents have been filed that give a detailed list of what the government was looking for plus a motion to allow more time for federal investigators to access information on the hard drive of a computer that was seized at the East Palatka labor camp.

In a search warrant application filed April 2004, the Federal Bureau of Investigations detailed the items to be searched for on the farm camp premises. Included on the list were controlled substances such as cocaine, plus drug paraphernalia related to the distribution, packaging and preparation of cocaine and ledgers, journals and other documents reflecting entries of debts and interest charged to laborers for the acquisition of cocaine, alcohol and cigarettes.

In the search warrant was a list of firearms, ammunition, knives, machetes and other weapons.

An itemized list of items actually seized is not available.

The warrant says that Evans allegedly recruited homeless black men to work as agricultural laborers, that the laborers were offered crack cocaine and other contraband at the end of each work day as “credit,” and that force and a threat of force was used to coerce the laborers to keep them in a condition of debt servitude.

The FBI search warrant also stipulated that many of the witnesses used to obtain the warrant were homeless black men with histories of drug abuse. Many of the witnesses were recruited from a shelter for homeless in Miami called Camillus House. Also filed Nov. 18 was a motion by Kent to release witness background information in lieu of the government using such witnesses.

According to the responding order by U.S. Magistrate Judge Howard T. Snyder regarding the government’s use of confidential informants, potential witnesses and all surveillance data regarding the initial investigation of the labor camp, the defense could receive that information only when an actual witness list is produced prior to trial. Part of that motion also included a request for the psychiatric history and other matters bearing on competence of government witnesses.

Snyder’s order allowed for disclosure five days prior to trial because of the government’s concern about witness tampering or witness influence. Kent also filed a motion for the government to disclose any immunity offers to witnesses in exchange for testimony to which government response was that “no witness, to date, has been given or offered immunity.”

In a search warrant application filed June 13, 2005, concerning alleged Environmental Protection Agency violations, EPA officials documented that samples from Cow Creek were taken after an agent observed a large pipe underneath a wooden security fence near the Evans camp. Agents documented alleged floating human waste and alleged waste water from a laundry, kitchen, bath or shower in and around the pipe area.