02/26/2014
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One man charged with buying legal cold medicine that’s used to make illegal and highly addictive meth was sentenced Tuesday, just as the latest of more than a dozen others so far this year was charged with the crime.
Tazewell County’s felony court is filling with meth-related cases as police and prosecutors, using drugstore sales logs to track suspects and build evidence, target meth-making operations in the Pekin area.
Some of the defendants, if convicted, may receive relatively light punishment for purchasing over-the-counter medicine containing pseudoephedrine (PSE), a key active ingredient that meth makers need for their clandestine labs. Previous criminal convictions play a role in their fate.
Danny Freeman, 36, of Pekin, had no prior felony record before he pleaded guilty Tuesday to possessing PSE as a meth precursor. He was sentenced to two years of probation.
His wife, Melody Freeman, 38, is scheduled to appear on the same charge Friday. A third person charged with them last April, James White, 29, is next due in court April 14.
In an unrelated case, Jay Diegel, 36, could face years in prison following his arrest and court appearance last Friday on the same meth precursor possession charge.
Court records show Diegel, of 13509 Fourth St., Midway Addition, has received prison sentences that separately amount to more than 31 years for nine criminal convictions between 1995-2010.
The sentences include six years for burglary in 2010 and nine years for two separate convictions of aggravated battery in 2001. Diegel was on parole in the burglary sentence when he was arrested last Thursday.
By then city investigators had collected drugstore records, kept under state law to monitor PSE purchases, showing Diegel and his girlfriend had each gone to separate stores twice in January to buy boxes of cold medicine containing the ingredient, according to court records.
Diegel sold the boxes for $50 each to a person known by police to be involved in meth making, the records stated. The girlfriend, and two others also identified as buying PSE for the suspected meth maker, have not yet been charged.
In another case, Brian Broadfield, 37, of Washington, was expected to enter a guilty plea in federal court Tuesday on a meth conspiracy charge stemming from the discovery of a lab after it produced a small fire in a Pekin motel last April.
The case was put on hold until next month, however, when Broadfield’s attorney told the judge that, due to differences with Broadfield he did not detail in court, he wished to withdraw from the case. Broadfield’s charge carries a minimum 10-year prison term.
After Broadfield and attorney William Holman accepted U.S. District Judge Michael Mihm’s offer to discuss the apparent impasse in private, Mihm set the case for a status hearing March 25.
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