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Jury returns split verdict on suspected drug dealer
Updated: September 8, 2010, 7:28 AM
A suspected Buffalo cocaine dealer was acquitted of most drug charges against him Tuesday in State Supreme Court, but a jury convicted him on four counts that could send him to jail for 15 years.
Melzar Tishawn Wilkins, 47, erupted in anger at his attorney after the jury returned from five hours of deliberation and pronounced him guilty on charges of second-degree and third-degree weapons possession, unlawful possession of marijuana and resisting arrest. Justice Penny M. Wolfgang ordered him back to jail, where he has been held without bail.
Wilkins, who served time in prison after a forgery conviction in 1998, originally was arrested in August 2007 in a police raid at his home on Arnold Street, where he was found hiding in an attic crawl space. A loaded .38-caliber pistol was seized during the raid.
Wilkins failed to show up for his original trial date in January 2009 and was at large for eight months before he was captured as he hid in the closet of a home on Cambridge Avenue.
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