HOUSTON (AP) — A Texas attorney has been accused of using work-related visits to a county jail to smuggle in legal paperwork laced with ecstasy and synthetic marijuana to inmates over the past several months, authorities announced Monday.
Ronald Lewis, 77, was arrested on Friday after arriving at the Harris County Jail in Houston to visit an inmate, Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez said at a news conference.
During his arrest, Lewis had 11 sheets of paper believed to be laced with narcotics, according to authorities.
Lewis has been charged with two counts of bringing a prohibited substance into a correctional facility. He is free after posting bonds totaling $15,000. An attorney for Lewis did not immediately return a call seeking comment on Monday. Records with the State Bar of Texas show that Lewis has been a licensed attorney since 1982.
His arrest came after a monthslong investigation by the jail-based Criminal Investigations and Security Division, a new unit created earlier this year to probe an increase in drug overdoses at what is the largest county jail in Texas, Gonzalez said.
In June, following two inmate deaths that were possibly drug-related, the new unit began investigating information that illegal narcotics were being smuggled into the jail in paperwork that was sprayed or dipped with a chemical compound, said sheriff’s office Lt. Jay Wheeler.
Investigators received tips that led them to Lewis.
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