Man with 2 pounds of pot guilty of multiple felonies
By JARED STRONG
A 23-year-old Scranton man suspected of being part of a “large-scale drug trafficking network” was found guilty by a Greene County jury last week of six drug-related charges — three of them felonies — according to court records.
Kole Alexander Higgins was arrested in April after law-enforcement officers searched his house and garage and found more than two pounds of marijuana, nearly $1,000 of cash and a poster with a trim, mustachioed man with the words “There’s no business like blow business” on the wall, among other items.
Investigators had suspected Higgins also dealt cocaine — “blow” is slang for the drug — but found none of it during their search, court records show.
Greene County Sheriff Jack Williams became suspicious of Higgins after his office arrested another drug dealer, who made a telephone call from jail to someone and told them to go to Higgins’ house to get $2,500 to bail him out.
After that, deputies watched Higgins’ house and saw several people come and go who had been convicted of drug crimes.
“The traffic that we have observed at Kole’s residence and logged in the past few days shows that he is distributing illegal narcotics out of the house,” Williams wrote in his request for a search warrant for Higgins’ house and garage in the 1100 block of Lincoln Street in Scranton.
The search on April 12 found two large plastic bags with the marijuana, prescription pill bottles, a small amount of methamphetamine, drug pipes and other paraphernalia, and drug-related posters.
Higgins faced seven criminal charges and was found guilty of six of them, including three felonies: Controlled substance violation, failure to affix drug stamp and gathering where controlled substances are used.
He faces a total possible punishment of up to 20 years in prison when he is sentenced in October.
In his request for a court-appointed attorney, Higgins wrote that he worked sporadically at a hog barn and had earned $800 in the past year.
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