Piedmont resident Phillip Chandler, 53, is the second man – and second Chandler brother – to be arrested on felony charges of drug trafficking last week. Calhoun County deputies arrested Chandler last Thursday afternoon at his residence on Alabama Highway 9 just north of Piedmont, Sheriff Larry Amerson said.

Chandler’s brother, Eddie Chandler, was arrested last Tuesday on the same charges after deputies found 60 to 70 marijuana plants on his Piedmont Springs Road property, according to police records.

That Tuesday, Phillip Chandler was in the passenger seat of his brother’s pickup truck when the two were pulled over at a traffic light near Eddie Chandler’s residence, Amerson said. Deputies arrested Eddie Chandler after they found fertilizer, water buckets and the same string that had been used to tie bales of the marijuana in his truck.

Eddie and Phillip Chandler both carried the string “on their persons” and “from their appearance, it looked as if they had been doing that kind of work (harvesting marijuana),” Amerson said.

But deputies didn’t arrest Phillip right away, because they wanted to make sure they had enough evidence against him to do so, said Amerson.

After meeting with the district attorney’s office and reviewing the evidence, Amerson said they decided to arrest Phillip Chandler on marijuana trafficking charges, too.

“They (the district attorney’s office) did a review and said to go ahead and arrest the second brother,” he said.

A $250,000 cash bond has been set for Phillip Chandler, who, like his brother, is on federal probation for an earlier marijuana trafficking conviction.

Amerson said his criminal record could be the reason the bond is set so high.

Phillip and Eddie Chandler are the brothers of David Ronald “Ronnie” Chandler, the first man convicted under the federal “drug kingpin” law.

David Ronald Chandler, the convicted leader of a massive Piedmont drug ring in the late 1980s and early 1990s, was the first federal defendant to be sentenced to death under a 1988 anti-drug law that allows for capital punishment when an intentional killing occurs in connection with criminal enterprise. During the 1991 trial, David Ronald Chandler was convicted of ordering the death of a police informant, securing a capital punishment verdict. President Bill Clinton commuted Chandler’s sentence to life in prison.

In 1991, Eddie Chandler served a shorter prison sentence alongside his brother’s life-long one – he was locked up for eight months for his participation in David Ronald Chandler’s drug trafficking ring.

Eddie and Phillip Chandler’s most recent arrests were precipitated by an air search conducted by the Alabama State Troopers and Calhoun County deputies on Tuesday morning. State troopers routinely fly airplanes over Alabama counties to search for marijuana.

Authorities said when they flew over Piedmont, they spotted the illegal plants on Eddie Chandler’s property. One marijuana plant is worth about $2,000 on the street today, Amerson said. That means Calhoun deputies confiscated about $120,000 to $140,000 of marijuana.

Amerson said he is pleased at the outcome of the investigation.

“The good people in Piedmont have really been upset about the kind of shadow these people put on their community,” he said.