Dec 27, 2018 3 min read

Washington County prosecutors withdrew drug charges against a former Washington man following a judge’s ruling that the evidence against him came from an illegal traffic stop.

Assistant District Attorney John Friedmann notified Common Pleas Judge Valarie Costanzo of that decision in a proceeding Dec. 20, writing in a petition the judge signed that his office wasn’t pursuing charges that county drug task force detectives had filed against Pyreese Wallace, 35, on Jan. 22.

Investigators were waiting to execute a search warrant at a house at 666 Fayette St. when a man later identified as Wallace and a woman came out, got into a car and drove off.

Since Jan. 15, an informant working with Det. Joseph Fichter had purportedly completed four “controlled buys” of crack cocaine at the residence from a man known only as “Smoke,” whom police later identified as Wallace. Fichter had obtained a search warrant for the house and people there.

Wallace’s attorney, Assistant Public Defender Adam Yarussi, challenged the evidence that police had found after a marked city police car pulled over the vehicle that left the Fayette Street residence. Wallace was riding in the car while the woman drove.

Police said they suspected they were involved with drug sales at the residence. The judge suppressed that evidence in an Oct. 31 decision.

While Costanzo’s ruling didn’t automatically dismiss the charges, Yarussi said the prosecution didn’t appeal the decision within the requisite 30-day window.

First Assistant District Attorney Dennis Paluso, who represented the prosecution at a hearing on Yarussi’s suppression motion, said it “would generally be quite difficult to prove the possession with the intent to deliver a controlled substance when the court suppressed the evidence seized by the police.”

Wallace was charged with drug possession with intent to deliver and drug possession. To support those charges, police relied on 23 individual bags of cocaine – 10 grams in total -they allegedly found in his sweatshirt pocket when they searched him. In a pants pocket, they said they found $1,384 in cash.

Yarussi said his client had agreed to forfeit a quarter of the cash to authorities. Wallace has been in Washington County Jail on $250,000 bond since the charges were filed. Records show he is still being held there based on a warrant out of Illinois.

Police searched the house, itself, but didn’t locate anything that resulted in further charges. In her ruling to suppress that evidence, Costanzo noted the warrant police had obtained allowed for the search of the house and people inside, but “there is no mention of any vehicles or of persons inside vehicles.”

Additionally, a police report filed by another detective didn’t indicate any traffic violations precipitating the stop, Costanzo wrote in a 15-page ruling.

“The evidence and testimony supports a finding that the vehicle stop was illegal because the search warrant did not provide authority to conduct the stop, and the police did not possess reasonable suspicion to believe (Wallace) was engaged in criminal activity at the time of the stop,” Costanzo concluded. “In addition, the evidence and testimony supports a finding that the search of (Wallace’s) person was illegal since the Commonwealth presented no testimony to establish that the police believed (Wallace) was armed and dangerous at the time of the search.”