The plight of 33-year-old Bryan Montiea Wilson of West Columbia should serve as a cautionary tale.
It was the morning of Dec. 13, and Wilson was a couple of hours into his shift at Harsco Rails performing his duties as a material processor. His work was interrupted when his supervisor asked him to go to the main office.
There, Wilson encountered two men and a woman in civilian clothing who did not produce identification. They announced they were with the ATF and had a warrant for his arrest.
They proceeded to handcuff their suspect and search him. He was marched outside in front of his coworkers and discovered that two more agents were going through his vehicle. Wilson described himself as “humiliated” by the process.
Wilson went through the booking procedure at the courthouse and was placed in a solitary holding cell. This was all quite the shock for a man who had never been arrested and lived a quiet life. A public defender was called, and that’s when the confusion truly set in.
He discovered that he was accused of five counts of possession with the intent to distribute and three counts of possession of a firearm in furtherance of a drug trafficking offense.
Convictions on all counts could bring up to 115 years in federal prison and fines totaling a staggering $17 million.
When Wilson made his first appearance in court for arraignment, he was shocked to hear an agent testify that the ATF had him under surveillance for 13 months. The agent rattled off specific dates on which undercover officers allegedly purchased drugs from Wilson and asserted that the defendant was caught in the act on tape.
Only, none of this was true.
Court documents presented in the case revealed two West Columbia police officers who were assigned to the ATF task force reported “a series of gun and drug purchases” from Wilson. Authorities even listed his home address and correctly described him as a 33-year-old Black male.
Because of evidence presented by the officers and the ATF, eight days before his arrest a federal grand jury handed down an eight-count indictment.
But there was a saving grace for Wilson.
His federal public defender did brilliant work after he heard his client and the family insist that the suspect did nothing wrong. The attorney convinced prosecutors to keep Wilson at the courthouse while he checked the voracity of the ATF claims.
What he found was that Wilson spoke the truth — the ATF grabbed the wrong man.
The agency was forced to admit the major error, and prosecutors moved to dismiss the case. The prosecutors’ motion declared that “further review of the case reveals that the interests of justice would best be served by a dismissal of the pending charges as opposed to further prosecution.”
Needless to say, the dismissal is far from the end of the horrific case. In recent days, Wilson filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the two West Columbia officers who falsely claimed they purchased guns and drugs from him.
The filing asserted that Wilson “has never trafficked drugs. He is a lawful gun owner. He has no criminal record.”
His attorneys further note alleged violations of their client’s Fourth, Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment rights.
After all, based on demonstrably false testimony, Wilson was arrested at work in front of his associates and held in custody as a completely innocent man. This led to several malicious rumors at his worksite, including the dangerous accusation that he provided testimony on another defendant to secure his own release.
Another civil rights lawsuit against the ATF is expected.
Interviewed last week, Wilson explained that “something got messed up and they landed on me. I don’t know how this happened, but it can’t happen again. It shouldn’t happen again.”
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