The conduct of a Maine State Police trooper surrounding a traffic stop has put a federal drug case in jeopardy, and critics say racial profiling is to blame.The case centers on police dashboard camera video recorded on the night of June 26, 2019.State trooper John Darcy was following a Kia Sedona minivan with Maine license plates going northbound in the right lane of Interstate 95, the Maine Turnpike, from near the York toll plaza for roughly six minutes until Darcy pulled the vehicle over."Two times, almost three times, you're swerving into the right lane back there, and you're going like 45,” Darcy told the driver, according to a copy of the video obtained by WMTW.Darcy has served with the state police since 2013, and the department named him trooper of the year in 2019.The driver was a Black man named Donald Green. The passenger was a Black woman named Alexis Boyd. Both were from Connecticut. In questioning them, Darcy heard what he considered “inconsistent” reasons where they were headed and why. “I believed that criminal activity was taking place,” Darcy would write in his police report.During a routine license check, Darcy discovered Green's driver's license had been suspended."Nothing illegal in the car?" Darcy asked Green."No," Green said.Darcy called for backup and decided to lead a search. Trooper Jodell Wilkinson arrived with a drug-sniffing Labrador retriever and instructed the canine to “find dope,” according to her police report.K-9 Pinny detected illegal drugs near the front of the car.Wilkinson and Darcy commenced a search of Green and Boyd’s belongings and found something suspicious inside a sock in Boyd's backpack. In the dashcam video, Darcy is seen bagging the evidence, which according to the police reports, turned out to be 52 grams of heroin."You're both detained right now because there was drugs found in your car," Darcy said to Green and Boyd."Drugs found in the car?" Boyd asked."Yep," Darcy said.Federal prosecutors later charged Boyd with possession with intent to distribute heroin.But Boyd's attorneys argued the traffic stop — and therefore the vehicle search — was illegal for having violated her constitutional rights under the Fourth Amendment, which protects people from unreasonable searches and seizures by the government.“Trooper Darcy has what the defense now knows to be a pattern of manufacturing reasons to stop and impermissibly detaining and searching people of color, particularly as they drive on Interstate 95 near York, Maine,” Assistant Federal Defenders Daphne Donahue and Grainne Dunne wrote in court papers.The Boyd defense attorneys, who declined to be interviewed, alleged eight incidents in 2018-19 of “race-based policing” that, they said, show Darcy “fabricates pretextual justifications to initiate traffic stops” of people of color.A subsequent internal Maine State Police investigation of more than 1,000 Darcy traffic stops concluded in July there was “no evidence of any pattern of targeting of motorists based on race, or any other trait common to a protected group.”Zachary Heiden, Chief Counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union of Maine, supported the defense motion to suppress the Boyd drug evidence.Heiden said in an interview, "The courts call that the fruit of a poisonous tree. It doesn't matter how good the evidence is. If it was obtained in violation of the Constitution, it can't be used in criminal cases." Heiden, along with Boyd’s defense attorneys, suspected racial profiling."Police need to have reasonable and articulable suspicion in order to pull a driver over and that simply can't be a gut feeling or a mere hunch," Heiden said.In his reports and subsequent interviews, Darcy cited three reasons for the traffic stop: that the minivan was swerving in the right lane, that it was driving too slowly — just 45 miles an hour — and the time of day, 10:30 p.m.U.S. District Judge Nancy Torresen, upon viewing the dashcam video and listening to Darcy testify in a suppression hearing, found none of those reasons convincing.On Nov. 15, Torresen ordered prosecutors not to use the drug evidence, stating in an 18-page ruling, "Darcy was generally not a very credible witness and in part, because the video tells a different story.”“The judge and everybody in the court watched that video and was able to see for themselves that the police officer had made up the story,” Heiden said. "Police didn't have a legitimate reason to pull this driver over, and so the Court said, 'You're not able to use evidence that you obtained in violation of the Constitution."If prosecutors don't dismiss the charges, Boyd's trial is scheduled for January. Darcy is part of a special team of about 20 state troopers in the Pro-Active Criminal Enforcement unit, or PACE, which targets drug trafficking.Maine State Police would not comment on the active case or make Darcy or anyone else available for an interview.Federal prosecutors in the office of U.S. Attorney Darcie McElwee noted in court papers that two-thirds of Darcy's stops in 2019 and three-quarters of his 2020 stops involved White drivers.Of 705 traffic stops Darcy made in 2019, 67% of the drivers (475) were white, 12% (86) were Black, 5% (36) were Hispanic, 3% (22) were Asian, and 10% (86) were “other,” according to the government data.Of 350 traffic stops Darcy made in the first ten months of 2020, 73% (254) of the drivers were White, 8% (28) were Black, 6% (20) were Hispanic, 3% (10) were Asian, and 11% (38) were "other," according to the government data.WMTW has asked Maine State Police and the U.S. Attorney for more specific, available data – such as dates, states affiliated with the vehicle registration and driver’s license, ethnicity of occupants involved, reasons for stops, and results of stops. At least 10 Darcy drug seizure stops in 2020 were referred to state prosecutors and another 10 to federal prosecutors, according to court papers filed by the U.S. Attorney.WMTW has learned, between 2019 and 2021, the Maine Attorney General brought 52 cases involving drug offenses in York County – the primary area patrolled by Darcy — where the investigating agency was Maine State Police. Of those 52 cases, 37 resulted in convictions and seven were taken over by the U.S. Attorney.