Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 17, 1991 TAG: 9103170114
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: D-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By LAURENCE HAMMACK STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
"I was thinking, `This is trash; this is such trash,' " Rudd said later. "And I was asking myself: `How can I refute this?' "
Rudd, the Roanoke Valley's regional drug prosecutor, had an answer by the time defense attorney John Kennett was done talking. Borrowing a trash can from the court clerk, Rudd placed the metal can on the witness stand and turned to face the jury.
"Ladies and gentlemen," he said as he pointed to the trash can. "If everything that Mr. Kennett just said was written on paper, it would belong right here."
That aggressive, often confrontational approach that Rudd has aimed - sometimes hurled - at drug dealers will be missing from city courtrooms at the end of the month.
After handling more than 1,000 drug cases in the past 2 1/2 years, Rudd is returning to private practice.
As the first person to fill the grant-funded regional drug prosecutor's position, Rudd arrived on Roanoke's drug scene in the summer of 1988, about the same time that crack cocaine did.
Since then, much of his time has been devoted to prosecuting street-level dealers who frequent the city's open-air crack markets. Defense lawyers, judges and court officials say Rudd has earned a reputation as both a knowledgeable lawyer and a zealous courtroom advocate.
"He's like a bulldog in the courtroom," said Tom Roe, a Roanoke lawyer who has faced Rudd as opposing counsel after working with him as a fellow prosecutor. "He goes after something full force, and nothing will stop him."
But while Rudd is "often pugnacious," as Roanoke Circuit Court Judge Clifford Weckstein put it, he seldom loses sight of the facts in a case.
"His ability to be an aggressive trial lawyer does not diminish his ability to carefully evaluate and negotiate cases," Weckstein said.
Rudd, 30, describes his style as "dynamic and intense." But he claims no great success in fighting the city's drug problem. After putting drug dealers behind bars for 2 1/2 years, Rudd realizes that law enforcement alone is only a "stopgap measure" in the fight against drugs.
For every drug dealer who ends up in prison, there seems to be another waiting to take over his street-corner spot. Prosecutors and police have not been able to make the problem go away, Rudd said, but they have kept it from getting any worse.
"We seem to have reached an equilibrium," said Rudd, a former Roanoke assistant commonwealth's attorney. "And if you're maintaining the status quo, in my opinion, you're doing quite well."
But even though prosecution isn't the only answer to the drug crisis, Rudd tackles his cases with an intensity as if it were.
His short temper sometimes takes over as he grills defendants on the witness stand in a way that can make even the most cocky drug dealer falter. And when he points at a defendant to drive a message home, it wouldn't be unusual if his finger was just inches from the person's face.
In fact, when he first started trying cases, a standard line in Rudd's closing arguments was to apologize to the jury if his style had offended anyone.
"You always run the risk of alienating people when you're aggressive," he said. "But sometimes the only way to get a truthful response out of someone is to go after them."
While Rudd said he has "mellowed somewhat" over the past two years, he still creates some courtroom theatrics.
After listening to the closing arguments of a defense lawyer in one case, Rudd started his rebuttal by stripping off his suit coat, flinging it across his chair and telling the jury that he had never heard so much hot air from a defense attorney.
In another case, the lawyer was making a slow, methodical closing that Rudd feared was lulling the jury into a state of confusion. Borrowing a necklace from a woman in the courtroom, Rudd slowly swung it back and forth before the jury like a hypnotist and warned jurors not to fall under the "spell" of the defense lawyer.
Outside the courtroom, Rudd emphasizes that law enforcement alone will never rid the community of drugs. Although Roanoke police have been as successful as any other city's, he said, better education and treatment offerings are needed to combat the problem fully.
When politicians adopt a get-tough attitude on drugs while allowing education funding to drop, they're "taking one step forward and two steps backward," Rudd said.
The value of an overall education - not just drug awareness programs such as DARE - makes the classroom a better place than the courtroom to keep the city's youths drug-free, Rudd said.
"It's the value system and sense of self that will eventually steer these youths clear of drug use and drug sales," he said.
Rudd said he decided to step down from the regional drug prosecutor's position in part because of bureaucratic "hindrances" with the state agency that administers the grant-funded post. Although he admitted to a certain degree of burnout, he said he will miss the daily challenges of his job.
Despite his reputation as a tough prosecutor, Rudd sometimes bucks that stereotype - recommending lenient sentences in some cases and coming close to favoring the legalization of marijuana.
Although Rudd said he does not advocate legalizing marijuana for unrestricted sales, he's more willing than most prosecutors to listen to arguments for decriminalization. Noting that legislators have lowered punishment for marijuana offenses over the years, Rudd said society now realizes that the drug is not as dangerous as once thought.
But in waging a "war on drugs," he said, many people fail to draw distinctions between drugs such as marijuana and crack. "Marijuana is a far different animal than crack cocaine," Rudd said. "Marijuana does not create the social ills that crack does."
And although Rudd has not hesitated to ask for long prison terms in some cocaine cases, he doesn't make it an unbreakable habit.
"You can't feel too righteous just because you're wearing the white hat of the prosecutor," he said. "Getting up and asking for 20 years every time you do a drug case doesn't make any sense.
"It's a misuse of the prosecutor's power. The prosecutor should use his power to try to help people."
For example, in the high-profile case of a former football star charged with dealing crack, it would have been easy for a prosecutor to ask for a long sentence to send a message to the community. Citing the man's previous clean record and his potential for setting his life straight, Rudd recommended probation.
"I don't think that being an aggressive prosecutor necessarily goes hand in hand with demanding long sentences in all cases," Weckstein said. "All of the judges have learned to respect Jeff's evaluation of a case when he makes a sentencing recommendation."
Keywords:
PROFILE
by CNB