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

DATE: SATURDAY, June 4, 1994                   TAG: 9406060156
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: LAURENCE HAMMACK STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

INFORMANT SPARED LIFE TERM REDUCED SENTENCE A REWARD FOR HELP IN NABBING

Johnson's knowledge - and his willingness to share it with the law - saved him from spending the rest of his life in prison.

A judge in U.S. District Court in Roanoke sentenced Johnson on Friday to 16 years and eight months in prison for his role in a major crack cocaine operation uncovered by an investigation called "Operation Roundball."

"I think you were one of the major players," Judge Jackson Kiser told Johnson.

But because Johnson implicated many of the approximately 30 people charged in the probe, prosecutors did not seek what could have been a mandatory life sentence with no parole.

William "Chill Bill" Burnette, another Roanoke man who authorities say was just as involved as Johnson but not quite as talkative, was sentenced Friday to 20 years in prison.

The case illustrates how both drug dealers and prosecutors can benefit from "debriefings" held after the first arrests in a major drug sweep. While suspects talk their way out of stiff, mandatory sentences, authorities use the information to arrest more suspects.

Silence can be costly; the most severe sentence imposed so far in Operation Roundball was a life sentence for Everette B. Law, who refused to cooperate with authorities.

During interviews that lasted two days, Johnson gave a detailed account of names, dates and transactions.

"It was amazing what his recall was," Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephen Baer said.

Everyone charged in Operation Roundball has pleaded guilty so far, and authorities attribute many of the convictions to Johnson's willingness to testify against his criminal colleagues.

Johnson, 30, and Burnette, 22, were key figures in an enterprise that brought up to a kilogram of cocaine into Roanoke from New York or Houston every 10 days. Because many drug deals were struck on basketball courts in city parks, authorities called the investigation Operation Roundball.

Another common theme revealed by Roundball was the willingness of girlfriends and family members to assist dealers by laundering drug money and helping to hide their assets, Baer said. Some women have been charged with money laundering for wiring large cash payments to out-of-town suppliers, usually at the direction of drug-dealing boyfriends or relatives seeking to protect themselves.

Johnson's girlfriend, Hope Flint, was convicted of money laundering for allowing him to title one of his expensive sports cars in her name. She was sentenced Friday to 12 months in jail.

Federal sentencing guidelines had set Flint's minimum term at 27 months, but Kiser said that was too much. While mothers, girlfriends and sisters may not have been totally innocent victims of drug dealers, the judge said, "certainly they have been used."

Baer, who plans to appeal Kiser's decision to depart from the mandatory guidelines, says the women should be held just as accountable.

"The men are no less victims," he said. "Because the women are flocking to the expensive cars, the gifts and the fancy clothes" that are often seen as the sign of a successful drug dealer.

"The young drug dealers know that if they have the money and the cars, they're going to get the girls," Baer said. "It's a vicious cycle."