PEABODY — Just days before he was to enter into a plea agreement that would have meant serving only a few more months in prison on cocaine-trafficking charges, a Lynn man managed to get arrested on charges of the exact same thing Tuesday.
Now Duane Collins, 50, could be facing a five-year minimum mandatory prison term, and the plea agreement for the earlier case is off the table, at least for the time being.
Collins went to prison, sentenced to 51/2 to seven years, in 2008 following his conviction on cocaine-trafficking charges.
Those charges stemmed from an incident at Su Chang's, a Chinese restaurant on Lowell Street in Peabody, in 2005.
Police were called after Collins began acting up inside the bar, apparently upset that employees were trying to call him a cab. He was charged with disorderly conduct, but when police towed his car, they found 38 grams of cocaine (about 11/3 ounces) inside, so he was charged with drug trafficking.
After the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2009 in a different case that prosecutors must call the chemists who analyzed the drugs to testify at trial, Collins was granted a new trial and was released on $20,000 bail.
Yesterday, he was supposed to enter into a plea agreement that would have called for him to serve a total of three years and allowed him to receive credit for the time he served after his first conviction.
Instead, he appeared yesterday in handcuffs, after his arrest Tuesday night in Lynn.
State police allege that Collins ran a red light and was passing cars on the Lynnway. They suspected he was drunk, so they followed him and then stopped his car.
Collins passed field sobriety tests, but police found more than an ounce of cocaine in a cooler in his car — which police had checked because they suspected he had an open container of alcohol.
Collins' lawyer, Russell Sobelman, suggested outside court yesterday that he may challenge the legality of the car search because it happened after police had decided Collins wasn't drunk.
But that possibility didn't stop Lynn District Court Judge James Lamothe from revoking Collins' bail in the older case, meaning he'll remain in custody at Middleton Jail.
He'll be back in court March 15.
Courts reporter Julie Manganis may be reached at 978-338-2521 or jmanganis@salemnews.com.
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