Andrew Fahie and Oleanvine Pickering Maynard will get more time to prepare their defense against drug and money laundering charges after delays with downloading and copying the U.S. government’s purported evidence against them, a Florida judge has ruled.
Judge Kathleen Williams of the District Court for the Southern District of Florida on Friday approved the motion for an extension of time, staying all currently set deadlines in the case for 14 days from the date that Fahie and Pickering Maynard can gain access to the government’s files.
Fahie, 51, the former British Virgin Islands premier, and Pickering Maynard, 60, director of the BVI’s ports, were arrested April 28 at an airport in Miami, Florida, and later indicted on charges of conspiracy to import millions of dollars in cocaine, conspiracy to engage in money laundering, and attempted money laundering.
They had allegedly spent weeks in negotiations with U.S. Drug Enforcement agents posing as drug runners. Prosecutors said the two boarded a private jet to inspect what they thought was $700,000 in cash, a tiny fraction of what they allegedly hoped to reap for importing hundreds of thousands of kilograms of cocaine through their British overseas territory to the U.S. mainland.
Pickering Maynard’s son, Kadeem Maynard, 31, faces the same charges and is being held at the federal detention center in Puerto Rico after he was arrested April 28 on St. Thomas.
While Fahie and Maynard Pickering are scheduled to stand trial July 18, his lawyer said at his Nebbia hearing on June 13 – essentially a hearing to certify the source of his bond money – that she anticipated she would request a continuation after an initial review of the size and scope of the government’s files in the case. The deadline for both sides to file pretrial motions, June 22, has come and gone.
“The Government’s production was received on Friday, June 17, 2022. Since then, efforts have been continuously underway to download and copy the discovery materials so that Mr. Fahie may review the discovery. That process is incomplete owing to technical difficulties in downloading a certain file of data that purports to contain extracts of phones and computers,” his attorney Theresa Van Vliet stated in the motion to extend the deadlines filed on June 20.
“Additionally, we are unable to file any anticipated request for a continuance of the currently set trial date until there is access to the discovery so that a good faith estimate of the additional time needed can be fashioned,” Van Vliet wrote.
“In light of the foregoing, Mr. Fahie requests that all currently set deadlines be stayed until fourteen (14) days from the date he is able to gain access to the Government’s production in order to afford reasonable time to propose a pretrial schedule and trial setting,” Van Vliet wrote.
The prosecution does not object to the extension of the deadlines, she said.
Fahie was released from federal detention in Miami on June 13 after posting two $500,000 bonds and is living at his daughters’ Miami apartment under GPS monitoring 24 hours a day, seven days a week. He is not allowed to leave the apartment except for court appearances, had to surrender his passport, and sign a worldwide waiver that he will not fight extradition should he flee.
Pickering Maynard remains in federal detention in Miami and is represented by Public Defender Raymond D’Arsey Houlihan.