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

DATE: TUESDAY, April 16, 1991                   TAG: 9104160420
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: B3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

MAN GETS 20 YEARS ON DRUG CONVICTION

A Southeast Roanoke man has been sentenced to 20 years in prison for heading a drug operation in which he supplied a small network of dealers with cocaine.

Robert Lawrence Payne was convicted last August in U.S. District Court in Roanoke of conspiring to distribute more than five kilograms of cocaine between 1985 and 1990. A jury found him guilty of five of seven counts on which he had been indicted.

U.S. Judge James Turk last week sentenced Payne to 240 months on one count and 135 months on the other four counts. The sentences are to run concurrently.

Law-enforcement officials assigned to the federal drug task force discovered Payne's activity partly through an operation in which an undercover Drug Enforcement Administration agent purchased cocaine from one of Payne's dealers.

by CNB