After Orange County sheriff's deputy Mark Wayne Hewlett was arrested for driving drunk into then-county Supervisor Bill Campbell's front-yard planter in December 2009, prosecutors revealed the off-duty cop was also in possession of the anti-anxiety drug Xanax, for which he did not have a prescription.
That was obviously followed by an investigation, because Hewlett is scheduled to be arraigned this morning for allegedly lying to doctors about what prescription pills he was already taking so he could illegally obtain more medication.
A conviction could send the 35-year-old Yorba Linda resident to jail for more than five years, according to prosecutors.
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At least five times between Sept. 9-Nov. 15, 2013, Hewlett went to four different doctors to obtain a prescription for the controlled substance hydrocodone, more commonly known as Norco or Vicodin, according to an arraignment statement from the Orange County District Attorney's office (OCDA).
When at these doctor offices, Hewlett did not disclose he was recently prescribed and currently taking hydrocodone so he could illegally get more of the same drug, the OCDA alleges.
Despite the crimes having taken place more than two years ago, the Orange County Sheriff's Department investigation of one of its own only resulted in Hewlett's arrest on Friday.
He is charged with five felony counts of obtaining a controlled substance by fraud, deceit, misrepresentation, subterfuge and/or concealment and is scheduled to be arraigned at 10 this morning at the Central Jail in Santa Ana.
Speaking of jail, the OCDA wanted Hewlett to spend a year in jail for the incident involving Campbell's home, but the judge only gave him probation and the OCSD reinstated him to full employment status.
Do you think anyone in Orange County officialdom is reconsidering that punishment now?
Naw, me neither.
Email: mc****@oc******.com. Twitter: @MatthewTCoker. Follow OC Weekly on Twitter @ocweekly or on Facebook!
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.