Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, February 6, 1991                   TAG: 9102060474
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: B3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

DRUG DEFENDANT PUT ON PROBATION

U.S. District Judge James Turk granted a prosecutor's "motion for substantial assistance," without which Stephanie Diane Jones would have been required to serve a minimum of 10 years in prison.

Jones was indicted with a cousin, Sylvia Priest, and Alexander Borsji Cowan on three counts of possessing and intending to distribute $14,750 worth of crack cocaine. Jones and Priest entered agreements in which two of the three counts were dropped in exchange for guilty pleas.

But Cowan, of New Jersey, maintained his innocence and went to trial. In August, a jury found Cowan not guilty on all three counts.

Cowan's acquittal was believed to be the first since the 1989 beginning of Operation Caribbean Sunset - an ongoing effort by federal, state and local authorities to try to rid Roanoke of crack.

Roanoke police officers who searched the apartment where Jones and Priest lived, and where Cowan occasionally slept on a cot, found crack cocaine drying out in ice trays and stuffed in a handbag and in the pocket of a black leather jacket.

Cowan maintained that he had declared a personal war on drugs, despite his 1988 arrest at the Richmond International Airport on charges of possessing drug paraphernalia. Cowan, who was carrying 2,000 plastic vials, said they were to be used to hold body oil.

"The most guilty party was acquitted by the jury," Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Mott told Turk on Tuesday in recommending probation for Jones.

Priest was sentenced to three years probation last month.