Saddled with federal narcotics trafficking, extortion and bribery charges after his Friday arrest by the FBI, William Brewer resigned as Tallahatchie County sheriff on Tuesday, bringing to a sudden close his almost 21-year career as the county’s chief law enforcement officer.
As a result, the Tallahatchie County Board of Supervisors was set to meet in special session Thursday morning (Aug. 16) to discuss appointing someone to serve as acting sheriff pending the outcome of next year’s regularly scheduled elections for countywide offices.
Brewer, 58, publicly announced his decision to step down during a Tuesday afternoon hearing in U.S. District Court at Oxford. However, his formal letter of resignation had already been emailed to Tallahatchie County officials nearly one-and-a-half hours prior to the 1:30 p.m. start of that federal court session.
The typed, one-page letter was submitted on plain stationery with the name “William L. Brewer Jr.” and his Oakland home mailing address centered at the top. Dated Aug. 14, the letter of resignation was sent from the email account of Brewer’s defense lawyer, Kevin Horan of Grenada, to the Charleston law office of Tommy Reynolds, attorney for the Board of Supervisors, at 12:10 p.m.
Addressed to the Tallahatchie County Board of Supervisors, the letter read:
“Dear Board Members,
“Please accept this letter to serve as my formal resignation from the position of Sheriff of Tallahatchie County, Mississippi, effective immediately.
“I sincerely apologize for the abrupt timing of this announcement; however, due to unforeseen circumstances, I have decided to resign.
“I would like to thank the Tallahatchie County Board of Supervisors and the citizens of Tallahatchie County for allowing me the privilege and honor to serve them in my capacity as Sheriff of Tallahatchie County.
“Going forward, I wish only the very best for Tallahatchie County and that a return to normal operations is on the immediate horizon.
“Sincerely, William L. Brewer Jr.”
Brewer’s decision to step down rendered moot the discussions that supervisors had with Circuit Judge Jimmy McClure during a regularly scheduled board meeting Monday night in Sumner. McClure met with the board to apprise them of the legal ramifications and remedies should Brewer be unable, due to incarceration, to fulfill his duties as sheriff.
Had Brewer refused to resign, and the federal court granted the request of the U.S. Attorney’s Office to continue detaining him, the circuit judge would have been tasked under the law with appointing an acting sheriff.
With a vacancy in the position, county supervisors bear the responsibility.
District 2 Supervisor Johnny Goodwin, president of the board, said there have been preliminary discussions about a replacement.
“We haven’t come to a definite conclusion on who, but we are looking at several different potential appointees,” Goodwin said Tuesday afternoon. “We certainly are going to do our due diligence to put someone in there who will bring integrity and keep integrity in the sheriff’s department. We’re going to try to make the best decision we can for the county.”
Thursday’s meeting by supervisors to discuss the sheriff’s vacancy was scheduled to get underway at 9:30 a.m. in the boardroom of the courthouse in Charleston, Goodwin said.
Court documents show that Brewer was arrested in Oxford on charges of conspiracy to distribute a controlled substance, and extortion and bribery under color of official right in violation of the Hobbs Act, for alleged crimes spanning a period of 15 years.
The alleged drug offenses are said to have occurred from June 2003 through June 12, 2018, while the alleged extortion and bribery crimes date from June 2003 through July 26, 2018, according to the Aug. 10 criminal complaint filed in federal court by an FBI agent.
On Friday, federal agents executed a search warrant at Brewer’s property located on Highway 32 in the Spring Hill community, involving his residence, vehicles and all outbuildings, including a barn. Passersby observed that the property was cordoned off with yellow crime scene tape. Court documents specified that any safes found in the residence were to be among an extensive list of items authorized to be seized during the search.
Brewer made an initial appearance Friday before U.S. Magistrate Judge Roy Percy. He was remanded to the custody of the U.S. Marshals Service and remained jailed in Lafayette County pending Tuesday’s scheduled preliminary and detention hearings at the federal courthouse.
Brewer was dressed in an orange jail jumpsuit for Tuesday’s hearing. Horan informed Percy that his client was waiving his right to a preliminary hearing, during which the charges would have been discussed in open court, and announced Brewer’s resignation as sheriff.
Percy granted Brewer a $25,000 secured bond, the required 10 percent of which was posted Tuesday afternoon, and Brewer was released after Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Mims withdrew the government’s request for pretrial detention.
The judge ordered Brewer be placed on supervised probation. Among the conditions of his release, Brewer was placed in a location restriction program commonly referred to as “home detention.” He is not to leave his residence except for employment, church, medical treatment, meeting with an attorney, court appearances or for other reasons preapproved by his probation officer. His travel is restricted to north Mississippi and he is to wear a monitor with GPS to track his whereabouts. Brewer also must not possess a firearm nor use alcohol excessively, among other restrictions.
According to an affidavit, the case against Brewer was built largely with the assistance of a confidential informant, whose name was withheld from court documents.
The informant told officials that about 15 years ago, when he was between 17 and 18 years old, he “started participating in illegal activity with Brewer,” according to the affidavit.
That activity, the informant told the FBI, consisted of robbing drug dealers of their drugs and money, providing the stolen money to Brewer, as well as selling the stolen illegal drugs and then providing money from the sale of the drugs to Brewer.
Over 15 years, the informant noted, he robbed drug dealers “at least 50 times.”
The drugs usually included methamphetamine, crack cocaine and powder cocaine, the affidavit noted.
In return for his services, Brewer allegedly protected the person from law enforcement in Tallahatchie County.
Two or three years ago, the informant noted, Brewer discovered that he was dealing methamphetamine that he had purchased from illegal drug suppliers rather than stealing from drug dealers as he and Brewer had allegedly conspired to do for the previous 12 or so years. As a result, the informant allegedly was made to pay Brewer $500 to $600 every other week from the proceeds of that illegal drug dealing.
“Brewer protected, conspired and allowed [the informant] to conduct illegal activity in Tallahatchie County for approximately the last 15 years,” the affidavit noted. “In exchange for Brewer’s protection and freedom to conduct illegal activity in Tallahatchie County, [the informant] provided monetary proceeds to Brewer from all ... illegal activity.”
The informant alleged that, “On more than one occasion, Brewer warned [him] to proceed with caution while conducting illegal activity due to the presence of local, state and/or federal law enforcement.”
The informant, the affidavit noted, was approached by the FBI in June 2018 and agreed to begin working with federal investigators to set up a series of sting operations.
From June 13-20, the informant and Brewer allegedly agreed, both in person and through recorded telephone calls, to rob a drug dealer in Tallahatchie County of approximately 10 bricks of methamphetamine. The informant, the affidavit noted, was actually being directed by the FBI and the entire theft was a ruse. Thinking that the drug dealer had, indeed, been robbed, Brewer allegedly accepted from the informant three payments totaling $10,000 in June and July, this time with denominations of bills from which federal authorities had recorded the serial numbers.
The affidavit highlights several instances where Brewer allegedly directed the informant to place large sums of money — $6,500 on one occasion, $1,000 on another — in a bucket in a barn located on the south side of Highway 32, directly across from Brewer’s home.
The affidavit noted that the money was believed by Brewer to be either stolen from drug dealers or the proceeds of the sale of stolen drugs by the informant.
Numerous face-to-face and telephone conversations regarding illegal activity discussed by the informant and Brewer continued to be recorded by investigators, court documents indicate.
The $6,500, which Brewer believed was money stolen from a drug dealer, according to the affidavit, reportedly was concealed in a cellular telephone box that was taken to Brewer. He allegedly examined it before telling the informant to put it under the bucket in the barn. A short time later, Brewer and the informant engaged in a telephone call that was recorded. Brewer asked where the informant had put the package, the informant told him and Brewer said that he had it, the affidavit added.
The last rendezvous between the informant and Brewer that is mentioned in the affidavit occurred on July 26, when the informant traveled to Brewer’s residence to allegedly pay him $2,500 which Brewer believed were the proceeds from the sale of stolen methamphetamine.
“During a recorded conversation, while [the informant] was at Brewer’s residence,” the informant told Brewer that he had sold all of the bricks of methamphetamine that he had stolen and had nothing left, the affidavit noted.
“Brewer encouraged [him] to continue selling methamphetamine. Brewer warned [the informant] to be careful who [he] was dealing with,” the affidavit added.
During Friday’s apparently exhaustive search of Brewer’s property, officials were ordered to seize “U.S. currency, financial instruments, precious metals, jewelry, safes and other items of value ... All bank statements, loan applications, money drafts, letters of credit, money orders, cashier checks, bank checks, safety deposit box keys, vault key and/or documents related to banking activities and other financial transactions, including, but not limited to, the purchase of real estate, vehicles and other assets and documents showing ownership of real estate, vehicles and other assets, or any other financial records reflecting transactions involving the proceeds of the illegal activity described herein. ... Any and all safes (both portable and affixed) and/or personal security lock boxes or containers of the size that may contain controlled substances, currency and/or files and the contents of any such safes ... Any electronic surveillance devices and electronic storage media that are believed to contain information and data related to the electronic surveillance devices ... Any and all controlled substances.”
The affidavit filed in federal court included 33 pages of attachments ranging from photos of various denominations of cash, lists of serial numbers from money and other supposed evidence, such as a photo of the cellphone box in which was placed the $6,500 allegedly given to Brewer.
The federal case against Brewer which prompted the sheriff’s resignation left supervisors’ attorney Reynolds struggling to find words to comment on the situation.
“It’s hard to take it in,” he said Tuesday afternoon. “Sometimes words escape you, so you don’t need to say. But I’m really saddened. It really is hard to express what you feel at a time like this.”
In the end, Reynolds added, “These are resilient people in Tallahatchie County, and I think they’ll rise to the occasion.”
Brewer had served as sheriff since being appointed to the post on Oct. 6, 1997. He was in the third year of his fifth elected four-year term. The current term expires at the end of 2019.
Ironically, Brewer’s promotion to sheriff came on the heels of the resignation of the last man before him to wear the sheriff’s badge: his boss, James H. Pugh of Sumner.
Pugh, 56, was Tallahatchie County sheriff from 1992 until he resigned Oct. 6, 1997, after pleading guilty to one count of obtaining prescription substances by misrepresentation, a felony.
Brewer, a former radio dispatcher and deputy sheriff under Pugh, was named his chief deputy in June 1992. After Pugh’s resignation, Brewer was supervisors’ unanimous choice to succeed him.
Brewer won a November 1998 special election for sheriff and has been re-elected to the position ever since, most recently in 2015.
Goodwin said Brewer did not at the time of his resignation have anyone designated to serve as his chief deputy.
If convicted, Brewer faces up to 20 years in prison on each count, along with fines ranging from $250,000 to $1 million per count.
