Lawyer making trip to court charged with drug possession By DALE LEZON Houston Chronicle
Houston lawyer Stanley Duane Wilkinson went into court last week to represent a defendant.
But he became a defendant himself.
Wilkinson, 53, is charged with possession of a controlled substance, a state felony.
It all started when Wilkinson approached state District Judge Mark Ellis to handle his client's guilty plea Sept. 22, according to a criminal complaint. The bailiff said he watched the lawyer pull some papers from his jacket pocket and then saw a small plastic bag fall out onto the floor.
"I think you dropped this," bailiff P. Halfin told Wilkinson.
Wilkinson said the bag wasn't his and that he didn't drop it.
Ellis told Halfin that he had seen something fall from Wilkinson's pocket at the same time the bag was found, the complaint says. The white powdery residue in the bag tested positive as cocaine, according to the complaint.
The residue was less than a gram.
Wilkinson, a member of the Houston Bar Association and a 1985 graduate of South Texas College of Law, could not be reached Monday. He was free on $2,000 bail.
Ellis' court staff said the judge will recuse himself from the case.