Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, January 24, 1992 TAG: 9201240379
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By LAURENCE HAMMACK STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
DEALER GETS 40 YEARS
One of the few people to contest a crack cocaine charge before a Roanoke jury was reminded why Thursday, when he received 40 years in prison for selling a small piece of the drug worth $25.The jury's sentence was the most severe punishment for a crack dealer since the highly addictive drug infiltrated Roanoke four years ago.
After a daylong trial in Roanoke Circuit Court, Kenneth E. Anderson was also fined $250,000 for selling crack to an addict who came knocking on his door the night of Aug. 10.
"I do feel that it's an indication of how the community feels about drugs and the sale of drugs," Regional Drug Prosecutor Melvin Hill said of the sentence.
In crack cases in particular, jury sentences have traditionally been so harsh that nearly everyone charged elects to plead guilty and be sentenced by a judge in hopes of a more lenient punishment.
While hundreds of crack dealers have pleaded guilty in recent years, Anderson was the first to take his case to a jury since October 1990.
In that case, a 23-year-old man was sentenced to 25 years in prison for directing the sale of a single "rock" of crack - which until Thursday had been the toughest sentence handed down in Circuit Court. (Another crack dealer had been sentenced by a jury to 40 years in prison, but a substitute judge later cut the sentence in half.)
The maximum sentence for dealing cocaine is usually 40 years, but Anderson had faced up to life in prison because of a prior drug dealing conviction.
He received a two-year sentence last year and had already been released on parole when he was arrested a second time.
Testimony Thursday showed that he was arrested after a crack addict turned police informant was directed by vice officers to go to Anderson's home on Patton Avenue and ask for drugs.
The informant testified that Anderson sold him a $25 rock of crack, which he then turned over to police.
Although police did not witness the transaction, they went to the home shortly afterward and photographed someone who matched the informant's description.
A grand jury later indicted Anderson, along with more than 60 other drug dealers who were charged as part of the same operation.
Anderson, 36, testified that he could not remember his actions on the night in question. His attorney, Bruce Welch, attacked the credibility of the paid informant, a felon and drug user.
Because the transaction was not seen by police, Welch suggested that the informant could have gotten the drugs somewhere else and "lulled the vice squad into a false sense of security."
But Hill noted that both the informant and his girlfriend have been addicted to crack in the past, and that he has since been reliable in working with police to eradicate the drug.
"He'd seen what it could do to people," Hill told the jury.