For the most part, attorney Tyler Ayres practices criminal law in Draper, Utah. If you Google him, the first result reads “Utah DUI Attorney.” But recently, Ayres has grown into a de facto voice against the third-party doctrine and Utah’s drug database, a combination allowing authorities to access citizens' prescription drug histories nearly carte blanche. Ayres has represented at least a dozen people with unforeseen issues because of this arrangement. The worse abuse he’s seen involves two of his clients: Candy Holmes and Russell Smithey.

Both Holmes and Smithey have extensive criminal histories. In a recent interview, Smithey conceded that he was an intravenous drug user and has since completed a drug court program. In 2011, his partner, Holmes, was picking up her prescription at a pharmacy near their home in Vernal, Utah. Both Holmes and Smithey regularly took Oxycodone and Methadone.

Ben Murray, an officer with the Vernal City Police Department, watched this Holmes encounter with the pharmacist, according to Smithey and confirmed by deposition documents. Murray says that “she was so intoxicated that she couldn’t even get her money out.”

Smithey tells the story differently.

He says Murray saw Holmes take some of the medication and get into her car to drive home. It would have taken longer than the drive home for the pills to set in, he explains. Either way, the undisputed facts are that Murray contacted dispatch and Holmes was arrested in her driveway after failing a sobriety test.

During the course of another investigation, Murray visited Holmes in the home she shared with Smithey. Again, the two sides differ on the details from here. In deposition documents, Murray claims Smithey approached him with concern about his wife and her drug use, asking the officer to keep in contact with the family and check in on them.

Smithey told Ars that Murray showed up at their home a few weeks after the initial DUI incident in uniform, telling them he’d been assigned to review their prescription drugs and ensure they’re not misusing them. He told the couple he needed to count their pills and asked them to retrieve the medication from the bathroom.

This happened between 20 to 30 times, according to Smithey and confirmed by both local media reports and Ayres. In his deposition, Murray said he couldn’t remember how many times he visited the family. But what Murray and Smithey do agree on is that often on those visits, they would be short on pills.

“I didn’t want to get in trouble,” says Smithey. “I would admit to taking the pills because... just to stay out of trouble.”

The shortage caused turmoil in Smithey's already tumultuous life. He accused family members of stealing. "I filed charges against my sister, threatened my wife with divorce because I wanted to keep a handle on our drugs,” explains an emotional Smithey, his voice rising as he recounts what happened.

Eventually, Smithey and Holmes turned their suspicion to Murray.

VHS for justice

At the time, Smithey worked at a thrift store run by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. A lady donated a video camera, and Smithey asked his colleague if he could buy it. “I got it for $12.00,” Smithey says proudly. He set it up where Murray usually sat as he counted the pills and waited for the next “prescription drug check.”

In the corresponding video, Murray asks Smithey compassionately, “How are things going?” He’s not in a uniform, instead wearing a golf shirt with an ID card or something official-looking hanging around his neck. “I trust you 100 percent,” he tells Smithey.

Murray puts on rubber gloves and asks Smithey to count the Methadone. He then takes another vial—which Smithey says was the Oxycodone. The video shows Murray repeatedly slipping the pills into his pocket as he asks questions about an investigation relating to Holmes' daughter.

“Clearly you have medical issues,” says Murray. “How can I help you guys?”

When Smithey first watched the tape, he held onto it for two weeks and told no one. “I got really scared, got really nervous that I had a video,” he says. Eventually, he confided in Ayres, who had helped Holmes with a DUI in the past.

“I want you out here tomorrow,” Ayres told him over the phone.

The attorney soon contacted the attorney general, and officers worked with Holmes and Smithey to set up a surveillance operation in their home. With the couple’s assistance, Murray was called to the house for a “drug check,” where he was again caught stealing the medication—this time by the authorities. The officer was arrested in the same driveway where Holmes had been taken into custody for the DUI a year before.

Murray was charged with unlawful use of the controlled substance database and possession of a controlled substance, according to Ayres. He pleaded guilty to possession of a controlled substance but no contest to unlawful use of the database. A judge sentenced him to 18 months of court-supervised probation.

Denial

In deposition documents from a related civil suit, Murray says he took pills only those two times. But Ayres is adamant Murray used the database to gain information about which prescriptions the couple received and when they were being refilled. In his deposition, Murray says he used the controlled substance database to find out Candy’s prescription history “many times,” yet he did not use it for the purposes of knowing when to go over to the couple’s home and do the supposed pill check.

Unfortunately, the truth of the matter may never surface. Holmes and Smithey have since settled legal matters privately with Murray. The two now live with a deep mistrust of authority figures, medical professions included.

“That man convinced me he was trying to help us” but instead “turn(ed) us against each other,” says an emotional Smithey. “I’ll never ask for another pain pill again. Now I live in pain every day and I walk funny, but I won’t go to a doctor and ask for pain medication, no.” Smithey takes a second, pauses, and calms down. “It’s crazy—it’s ripped my life upside down in a way that’s hard to describe.”

Further reading: The big drug database in the sky: One firefighter’s year-long legal nightmare