By William Thornton
al.com
HANCEVILLE, Ala. — Three former Hanceville police officers, including its former chief, and a wife of an officer pleaded guilty Wednesday to various charges that led to the department being abolished.
A Cullman County grand jury in 2025 found the department operated under “a rampant culture of corruption.”
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Acts included on-duty drug injections, misuse of criminal databases and distribution of controlled substances to each other and to others, according to the indictments.
The news of the indictments came after a Hanceville police dispatcher was found dead at work in 2024 from a drug overdose.
Christopher Michael Willingham, 49, died from “combined toxic effects of fentanyl, gabapentin, diazepam, amphetamine, carisoprodol, and methocarbamol.”
Nearly five dozen felony criminal cases were dismissed by that same grand jury, which found the cases “were unprosecutable” due to the corruption allegations.
Mayor Nolan Bradford in February abolished the police department to allow the city to “cut it off clean and rebuild it from scratch.”
According to court records, Jason Scott Wilbanks , 39, pleaded guilty to using his office for personal gain, tampering with physical evidence and criminal conspiracy to commit drug crimes. He received a split sentence of 20 years in prison, with four years in jail and eight years on probation.
Wilbanks played a “major role as the leader,” according to sentencing documents. He will serve his sentence in state prison and began serving it Tuesday, officials said
Former Chief Jason Shane Marlin, 52, pleaded guilty to two counts of obstructing government operations.
He was sentenced to 24 months of unsupervised probation, a $1,000 fine and court costs, according to court records.
Marlin retired from the Birmingham Police Department where he worked at the South Precinct.
Eric Kelso, 45, pleaded guilty to two counts of unlawful distribution. He received a split sentence of four months imprisonment and 56 months of supervised probation.
Donna Reid Kelso, 64, pleaded guilty to two counts of conspiracy to commit drug crimes. She received a year suspended jail sentence and 24 months of probation.
Marlin, along with the Kelsos, may be called as witnesses in any further prosecution.
William Andrew Shelnutt, 40, has applied for admission to Cullman County accountability court in connection with his charge of tampering with physical evidence.
In a news conference Wednesday, Cullman County Sheriff Matt Gentry said the cases “put a black eye on law enforcement.”
“There’s nothing more horrific than law enforcement officers making bad decisions,” he said.
District Attorney Champ Crocker said “the cleanup is still going on.”
“We had to dismiss a lot of cases in which these officers had arrested people,” Crocker said. “It’s not like we could go to court with them. There were cases in Hanceville municipal court, there were felonies and misdemeanors here that some of these defendants made, and unfortunately, we had no choice but to dismiss those cases.”
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