A plea agreement could be reached today in the case of a former city councilman facing federal criminal charges of helping to launder thousands of dollars in drug money.

Former Councilman John “Duke” Franklin Jr., arrested in May, is named on an indictment with nine others, and a U.S. magistrate judge set today as the deadline to work out plea agreements.

Absent the agreements, the judge told Mr. Franklin and the rest of his codefendants at their last court appearance to be prepared to go to trial. They previously pleaded not guilty to all charges during their arraignments in May.

Mr. Franklin was part of a drug roundup that netted a total of 42 people. Fourteen of those already have pleaded guilty for participating in a drug ring that, by Drug Enforcement Administration estimates, distributed at least 30 kilograms of cocaine a month in Chattanooga over the past year and a half. Four more people implicated in the case are scheduled to plead guilty Friday.

According to the plea agreement of suspected ringleader Marcus Lewis, which was made public Tuesday, he claims that the money Mr. Franklin allegedly helped to launder was meant to pay for cocaine in Atlanta. Mr. Lewis employed “runners” to drive to Atlanta on a weekly basis, according to his plea agreement.

Some of Mr. Franklin’s codefendants filed documents Tuesday asking the court for extensions to work out their own deals with the government.

Mr. Franklin’s defense attorney Marty Levitt, however, said they were still in negotiations with the federal prosecutor late Tuesday afternoon. Mr. Franklin faces charges of money laundering, conspiring to obstruct justice and providing false statements to federal officials in connection with the drug ring’s operations.

“We’re having ongoing talks. Whether they will amount to anything, I don’t know yet,” Mr. Levitt said.

According to Mr. Lewis’ plea agreement, his runners made weekly trips to Atlanta to buy between two and five kilograms of cocaine from codefendant Demarcus Akins. When Georgia authorities arrested one of the runners last December during a traffic stop, codefendant Michael Kelley took over the runner’s job.

Mr. Kelley was caught by police in early March with nearly $70,000 in cash in his vehicle. After the Hamilton County Sheriff’s Department confiscated the money, Mr. Franklin tried to conceal the origin of the money by making arrangements to falsify a loan document, according to the charges against him.

“The money that (Mr. Lewis) used to acquire cocaine from Akins was proceeds of (Mr. Lewis’) drug trafficking,” the plea agreement states.

According to court records, Mr. Franklin also initially told investigators that Mr. Kelley supplied him with cocaine at no charge for the past two years, with at least one of the hand-offs happening at the Chattanooga Metropolitan Airport.

The U.S. attorney’s office has declined comment on whether any drug-specific charges will be filed against Mr. Franklin.

“I don’t think they really contend that he had anything to do with the drug dealings,” Mr. Levitt said.

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