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Craig man’s drug case pushed to next week

Scott Schlaufman
Bryan Keith Koppe
7-30ACET__KoppeMUGRGB

An arraignment hearing in the drug case of a 27-year-old Craig man was continued Wednesday in Moffat County District Court.

Bryan Keith Koppe is charged with possession with intent to manufacture or distribute a Schedule 1 controlled substance, a Class 3 felony.

He was unable to appear at Wednesday’s hearing with Judge Thomas Ossola, who presided over district court in Judge Shelley Hill’s absence, due to a pending motion to allow him to appear by phone.



The hearing was continued until 10 a.m. Tuesday, Jan. 11.

Koppe, who is in custody at the Sterling Correctional Facility, is being represented by Steamboat Springs attorney Ron Smith.



“He would have been able to appear if the court had entered that order,” Smith told Ossola during the hearing. “He is currently at the Department of Corrections, so we wanted him to appear by telephone to enter his plea so they would only have to transport him over here once for the hearing.”

Ossola later signed the order allowing Koppe to appear by phone next week.

A decision on a motion for preservation of evidence and consumptive testing was delayed.

Smith told Ossola the motion was “to some extent, moot” because a plea agreement had been reached with prosecutors.

Both Smith and Marguerite Carr, a deputy district attorney for the 14th Judicial District Attorney’s Office in Moffat County, declined to comment on terms of the plea agreement.

Koppe was arrested July 28, 2010, in Craig as the result of a joint investigation between the All Crimes Enforcement Team and the United States Postal Service.

According to court records, Koppe was the recipient of a package mailed to him that allegedly contained a substance thought to be methamphetamine.

ACET reported that a field test confirmed the substance was meth, however the substance was sent to the Colorado Bureau of Investigation for more testing.

In late September, the charge against Koppe was changed from possession with intent to manufacture or distribute a Schedule 2 controlled substance to a Schedule 1 controlled substance.

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