Thursday's Internet Edition, September 02, 2010.

Bridge Work Site preparation is well underway on a new span to replace the existing Corder Bridge on U.S. 33/119 at the Roane-Calhoun county line. Bilco Construction Co. of South Charleston has an approximately $2.6 million contract to complete the work. Photo by Neil Grahame

Clemmie Harper, 59, of 102 Elm St. was charged with delivery of a controlled substance, possession with intent to deliver and obtaining a controlled substance by false pretenses.

Cpl. F.L. Hammack of the State Police detachment in Spencer filed the new charges against Harper, brother of Roane Sheriff Mikel Harper and an unsuccessful candidate for sheriff himself in 1984.

Clemmie Harper was arrested in May on the misdemeanor charge related to an overdose of another man on pain patches.

In that case, Spencer Patrolman John Westfall charged Harper with filing a false report. Westfall said Harper approached him the morning of May 10 to say pain patches and pills containing hydrocodone had been stolen from his home.

Those charges allege Harper filed the report after he had received a call from his doctor’s office asking him to bring in his medication for a “pill count.”

The same morning, police responded to an incident in the Spencer Middle School parking lot.

Police said Nathan Barrett of Circle Avenue was driving a pickup truck that struck a parked vehicle. When officers responded, Barrett was unresponsive, his face blue and his lips purple.

After paramedics administered a drug to counter the effects of morphine, Barrett allegedly told police he had smoked morphine and did not remember anything about the accident.

Police allegedly found a piece of foil in the vehicle that looked like it may have been used to smoke morphine.

Barrett allegedly gave police a statement that he had purchased a morphine patch from Clemmie Harper for $150. He told police he had purchased the patches from Harper 10 to 20 times over the past two years. Hammack obtained a search warrant for telephone logs that allegedly showed Barrett made a call to Harper that morning.

Hammack also obtained a search warrant for the office of Harper’s doctor, Kenneth Seen, at Roane General Hospital, who said he had been treating Harper over a five-year period.

Harper’s last prescription, received April 30, was for 20 morphine patches and 120 hydrocodone pills. When Seen’s staff conducted the pill count, they allegedly found all the pain patches gone and Harper short 70 hydrocodone pills. Harper said the medication was stolen from his home, although he found a few of the pills in the grass outside his back door. The nurses allegedly told Hammack there was no sign the pills had been anywhere but in the bottle.

Harper and his attorney, John Oshoway of Grantsville, appeared in magistrate court Wednesday afternoon for a hearing on the misdemeanor charge. That’s when Harper was arrested on the three felony charges.

He was released on $5,000 bond set by Magistrate Russell Goodwin, and the misdemeanor case was continued until a hearing is scheduled on the felony charges.