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Jimmy Banks, right, enters Fayette District Court on Wednesday for his preliminary hearing on a charge of drug trafficking in oxycodone. (Todd Kleffman/tkleffman@amnews.com / May 17, 2012) |
LEXINGTON — Former Danville resident Jimmy Lou Banks was released from jail Wednesday after a judge lowered his bond.
Banks had spent a week in the Fayette County Detention Center after being arrested on a drug trafficking charge when police raided his Lexington home on May 9.
Judge T. Bruce Bell reduced Banks’ full-cash bond from $10,000 to $5,000, which his wife, Regina, posted Wednesday afternoon. Banks’ movements will be tracked by electronic monitoring as part of his release, the judge stipulated.
In the morning, Banks appeared before Bell for a preliminary hearing on a charge of second-offense trafficking in oxycodone, but his attorney, Sean Marcum, waived the hearing and the case will be presented to a Fayette County grand jury within the next 60 days. The charge was amended to remove the second-offense. Marcum declined to comment.
According to court records, police made a controlled buy of oxycodone on the afternoon of May 8 and used that information to obtain a search warrant for Banks’ residence on Northridge Drive. During the raid conducted shortly after midnight on May 9, police seized nearly $5,000 in cash; oxycodone tablets stored in a tobacco can in a safe in the garage and two pill bottles; three cell phones; and paperwork located in a glass jar, court records show.
In an affidavit used to obtain the warrant, Boyle County Deputy Sheriff Brian Wofford, who also works for the Drug Enforcement Special Investigations unit of Kentucky State Police, stated that police have been keeping an eye on Banks’ alleged drug activities for two years, going back to when he lived at the corner of North Third Street and Lexington Avenue in Danville.
According to the affidavit, Wofford received information that Banks was trafficking in large quanties of oxycodone, which he traveled out of state to get. Wofford also had information that Banks “was using his family to assist in the trafficking organization”¿and that “Banks’ juvenile son was trafficking the oxycodone and would use a scooter to transport the narcotics.”
Using information from “a reliable confidential source,” Wofford learned that a Junction City man was traveling to Lexington with a male and female to purchase several hundred oxycodone tablets from Banks on May 8. Wofford followed the car to Lexington and Banks’ home, which was being watched by other detectives, who saw Banks, Regina Banks and their juvenile son on a scooter, the affidavit states.
Police followed the car after it left Banks’ residence and pulled it over in Jessamine County for a traffic violation. Consent to search the vehicle was obtained, and the female passenger admitted she had concealed the oxycodone in her vagina, according to the affidavit.
