Gulf Shores Attorney Faces Prison: In Mobile, Alabama, a Gulf Shores attorney, Michael Leonides Santos, is facing time behind bars for confessing to smuggling drugs into the Monroe County Detention Center. U.S. District Judge Kristi DuBose sentenced Santos to four months in prison, followed by a year of supervision by the U.S. Probation Office. Additionally, he is required to undergo drug treatment and testing.
Santos pleaded guilty in April to promoting prison contraband, acknowledging that he smuggled drugs to a federal prisoner held at the jail. According to Santos’s written plea agreement, from November 2021 through February of last year, an inmate exchanged numerous “Chirp” text messages with Santos and others, discussing the purchase of paper soaked in a synthetic cannabinoid known as “spice.” The inmate highlighted the profitability of selling these drugs to fellow inmates.
The plea agreement includes messages from the inmate on January 31 of last year, instructing someone to package drugs and give them to Santos. In the preceding month, the inmate messaged Santos, asking him to visit him in jail, assuring him, “They don’t look into that.”
Surveillance video from one jail visit shows Santos handing the inmate pieces of paper, which the inmate then placed in his socks. Corrections deputies seized the paper after the meeting, and a lab test confirmed it contained 158.3 grams of spice.
Federal agents searched Santos’s car, finding prepackaged baggies containing tobacco, phones, charging cables, and other commonly smuggled contraband items into jails. A cell phone seized from the prisoner contained text messages and evidence linking him to Santos, according to court records.
The Rev. James Hedderman, pastor of Corpus Christi Parish in Oneonta, Alabama, wrote a letter on Santos’s behalf. Hedderman mentioned knowing Santos from their time at Good Shepherd Parish in Russellville, highlighting their shared pilgrimage to Lourdes, France. The priest recalled a moving moment when Santos sang the “Ave Maria” with an excellent voice at a graveside service.
Hedderman vouched for Santos’s reputation as a good immigration lawyer and expressed hope that Santos could one day return to advocacy on behalf of immigrants. He prayed that this legal correction experience would bring out the best in Santos and requested favorable consideration for him during sentencing.
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