Meth in a Crown Royal bag: Court of Appeals hears Lafayette drug case at Canterbury School
FORT WAYNE, Ind. ---If you are ever sitting in an Indiana prison and your case goes in front of the Court of Appeals, you are lucky.
Only 2,000 cases out of the million filed each year in the state are heard by this distinguished 15-judge court.
Luck was probably on the mind of 46-year-old Cornelius Tate Wednesday, when the three judge panel who took on his appeal posed their questions to defense attorney Bruce Graham and two state attorneys, Aaron Corn and Caroline Templeton.
Tate was sentenced to 30 years with five years suspended for a conviction on possession with the intent to deal, a Level 2 felony and a meth possession charge that was dismissed.
Another eight years was slapped on to his 22-year sentence to bring it to 30 years with five suspended.
Tate is being held at Miami Correctional Facility, Indiana’s modern day version of a dungeon that shares space with the newly created 1000-bed Speedway Slammer, created for ICE detainees.
Tate’s earliest outdate is June 2044.
Inmates have a lot of time on their hands and when you talk to them, they will vigorously highlight every unfair aspect of their case.
But the appellate judges are restricted to the “probative” value of the evidence. No new evidence can be introduced.
So what it came down to in this most ordinary of drug cases was this: was there an insufficiency of evidence the state provided during his trial earlier this year?
(From left: Bruce Graham, Lafayette-based defense attorney, Aaron Corn, state attorney, and Crown Royal that comes with a bag. Lafayette police found baggies of meth inside a ike bag. Photos courtesy of the Court of Appeals."
Tate was a passenger sitting in Allison Langston’s Toyota Hybrid SUV at a McDonald’s restaurant on State Street in Lafayette on Oct. 1, 2024.
Employees inside the fast food resto called the cops to complain the vehicle had been there too long, but the probable cause affidavit didn’t indicate what time of day the incident occurred nor how long the Toyota was sitting there.
The answer apparently was two to three hours. It came out during the hearing that there was no surveillance footage from McDonald’s to determine how long the vehicle was there and maybe, more importantly, how long Tate sat in the passenger seat of Langston’s vehicle.
Appellate Judge Paul Felix posed an interesting hypothetical at least twice and indicated it might be of interest to all the high school students sitting in the Canterbury Auditorium.
If you get into a car, whether you know the driver well or not, and that car is stopped by police and they find marijuana in there, does the passenger get charged as well?
According to Corn, yes.
But Graham argued that other facts need to be present and in this case, they weren’t.
Incriminating statements by the defendant? nope.
Attempted flight or furtive gestures? nope.
Location of contraband in a drug manufacturing setting? nope.
Proximity of the contraband (meth) to the defendant - well, the car was stuffed with so much Tate couldn’t help but be close to the meth that was not in plain sight, but rather found inside an orange Crown Royal bag inside a large size black nylon jacket. The jacket was somewhere around the floor of the passenger seat in the very “junked up” vehicle.
There was “compelling evidence” that Ms. Langston was a meth dealer, not Tate, Graham said.
Location of the contraband within the defendant’s plain view - police said there were no drugs in plain view “when they first approached the vehicle” Then a baggie was spied underneath Langston’s leg when she was asked to step out. That bag looked a lot like the baggies in the Crown Royal bag.
Mingling of the contraband with other items owned by the defendant? nope. Not with any personal belongings, mail, ID, clothing or other personal effects.
Also, the Toyota was owned by Langston, driven by Langston and there was no follow-up investigation until the case was filed months later.
THE STORY:
When police got to the vehicle parked in the northwest corner of a McDonald’s parking lot on Oct. 1, 2024, the car was loaded with drugs and paraphernalia.
Employees inside the fast food restaurant on State Street in West Lafayette had complained that the vehicle had been there for hours, although there’s no note in court documents of the time of day or night.
On the driver’s person, Allison Langston, 43, police found a syringe. A digital scale, a typical item for drug dealers was in the center console of the Toyota hybrid SUV. A clear baggie with a “crystal like substance” was on the seat under her legs.
Officers noted that the Toyota was “crammed” with property and clothing; it looked as though someone had been living in it.
Langston was handcuffed and detained.
Cornelius Tate, 46, was sitting in the passenger seat and admitted to “doing a line of methamphetamine” inside McDonald’s. Tate said he had the intention to buy some meth from Langston, court documents said.
The cops let him slide after they found “no contraband on or near Tate’s possessions.” He left the scene with a leather jacket from the backseat, a baseball cap and his phone.
But in the Toyota on the floorboard where he’d been sitting in the passenger seat, police found a black nylon jacket with a Crown Royal bag in a pocket. Inside that bag were grocery bags wrapped around a scale with white residue, loose baggies and a box of baggies, court documents said.
[A quick online search indicates that the two most common Crown Royal bags are 750-milliliter (the medium size) which is approximately 7" x 9" and the 1-Liter which is about 7.5" x 10”]
At the scene, Langston loudly fingered him, declaring that “everything was Tate’s.” When police held up a large bag of meth, she yelled that “she never touched the bag and it was Tate’s,” according to the probable cause affidavit written by West Lafayette officer Michael Tajc
Later, Tate’s explanation was that he’d met Langston a few weeks earlier and that night, he was protecting her from a dangerous former boyfriend. First they’d met up at Lafayette Urban Ministry and then at McDonald’s.
The jacket with the baggies, however, played a role in bringing charges against Tate, filed on June 12, 2025. Police said the jacket was more the size you’d expect Tate to wear than Langston, though Tate said he’d seen her wear that jacket several times.
In Tate’s appeal filed July 13, it was stated that DNA from neither Tate nor Langston was found on the baggies and that no one ever requested Tate to try on the jacket or asked for his sleeve length or shoulder width.
Also missing from the investigation was surveillance video from McDonald’s. No items except for the baggies were submitted for DNA analysis, the appeal states.
A jury found Tate guilty in March of methamphetamine dealing, a Level 2 felony and meth possession, a charge dismissed at sentencing for double jeopardy reasons. For the dealing charge only, he received a sentence of 22 years. The advisory for a Level 2 felony is 17.5 years.
Because he had an extensive criminal history that included criminal trespass, intimidation, battery with moderate bodily injury, marijuana possession, false informing, armed robbery and auto theft, he was sentenced to an additional eight years for being an habitual offender.
In particular, Corn made mention of Tate’s “crime of dishonesty,” no doubt speaking of the false informing charge.
Five of the 30 years handed down by Tippecanoe County Judge Kevin M. McDaniel were suspended for probation.
Tate’s attorney, public defender Bruce Graham, argued that the evidence was insufficient to prove he was the one who possessed the meth found in the orange Crown Royal bag.
Graham said no forensic evidence linked Tate to the jacket where the Crown Royal bag was found and the baggies looked just like the other ones found in the car and beneath Langston’s leg.
Tate wasn’t convicted of actual “delivery” but rather intent to deliver. It’s up the state to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the meth was Tate’s, Graham said.
The appeal says that mere suspicion isn’t enough to prove guilt. The confusing part is that an appellate court cannot reweigh the evidence, but they have to look for “substantial evidence of probative value” to sustain the conviction.
“Indiana law allows a defendant (Tate) to question the sufficiency of the evidence,” a phrase that allows someone to question the evidence against him.
As the appeal points out, Langston was found to have a bag of meth underneath her leg, but Tate had none on him and he was released from the scene.
“Constructive possession” means the state has to show that Tate had the “capability to maintain dominion and control” over the meth and the intent to do that as well.”
The decision is expected in either weeks or months, according to Templeton.
The three COA judges were Paul D. Matthias, Paul Felix and Stephen Scheele who took questions from high school students after the hearing and seemed to enjoy it.
Matthias was a Fort Wayne attorney and attended local public schools: Pleasant Township Elementary School, Kekionga Junior High School and Wayne High School.
He graduated from Harvard University and got his law degree at Indiana University-Bloomington.
One of his hobbies is to help build theatrical sets at Hamilton Southeast High school, according to his bio, along with spending time on his Apple computers, technology and photography.
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