Advice-of-rights hearings were held in Territorial Court Wednesday in a case concerning the alleged assault of two tourists on St. John and two St. Thomas cases involving both drugs and other charges.
In his hearing before Judge Rhys S. Hodge, St. John resident James J. Paul was accused of assaulting two visitors during a confrontation over the operation of a rental vehicle. He was formally charged with two counts of disturbing the peace and two counts of assault. The court dismissed a vehicle-tampering charge against him.
Police Officer Earl Rogers testified that Paul had told the two women that they were illegally operating their rental jeep with the soft top down and that an argument followed in which Paul is alleged to have ripped the clothing of one woman and injured the arm of the other. The incident is alleged to have occurred near Mongoose Junction at mid-morning Tuesday.
Hodge allowed Paul, who had been in custody since his arrest on $23,000 bail, to post an unsecured bond for his release.
The second case stemmed from a routine patrol by Police Special Operations Bureau officers in downtown Charlotte Amalie on Tuesday that led to the confiscation of a double-barreled assault rifle and the arrest of a 22-year-old man on gun and drug paraphernalia charges.
At Wednesday's hearing, police said that Macali Wheatley was taken into custody after officers found the butts of two marijuana joints in his vehicle and that, while searching the vehicle in the area of Nye Gade, they found a MAC-11 assault rifle with 19 rounds of ammunition.
Officer Kelvin Vezen testified that officers initially stopped Wheatley's BMW for excessive window tint. After ordering Wheatley out of the vehicle, he said, officers detected "a high scent of marijuana coming from both Mr. Wheatley's person and his vehicle." He said officers proceeded to search the car for the source of the scent and found the rifle in the trunk.
Under questioning by the prosecutor, Assistant Attorney General Delia Smith, Venzen testified that the automatic rifle "is not a weapon that the VIPD licenses for citizen use." The gun, he said, "is capable of firing up to 30 rounds without reloading."
The initial charge of possession of marijuana was amended to possession of drug paraphernalia because only a minute amount of the drug was found in the butts. Venzen testified that the small amount was not field-tested.
Hodge, after finding probable cause to charge Wheatley, ordered that bail remain at $75,000 but with provision for posting 10 percent as a condition of pre-trial release. Wheatley was represented by Public Defender Joannie Plaza-Martinez.
In the third case, Robert Rhinehart, who resides on a houseboat in American Yacht Harbor on St. Thomas's East End, was arrested Wednesday morning by Planning and Natural Resources Department officers after marijuana was found aboard the vessel. Officer Montclair Guishard testified that he and a fellow officer boarded the boat, the Jaguar, minutes before 8 a.m. to conduct a routine inspection. They found a marijuana pipe and a wooden box containing marijuana, he said, and also determined that the vessel was illegally discharging waste into the water.
Guishard said Rhinehart is expected to face additional charges of illegal dumping to be filed by federal authorities. After Hodge found probable cause to charge him with simple possession of marijuana and drug paraphernalia, Rhinehart was released on $1,000 bail.
All of the defendants are to reappear in court on July 20 for arraignment proceedings.