ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, October 13, 1996 TAG: 9610140069
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LAURENCE HAMMACK STAFF WRITER
ROANOKE CIRCUIT COURT USUALLY handles the low-volume drug dealers, a fact that prompts some to wonder whether dealers who sell just to survive are worth such stiff punishments.
Carlos Minnis sat slumped in a courtroom chair, listening impassively to his bleak life story.
Two probation officers testified that Minnis, whose father is a crack addict and whose mother is a drug-abusing ex-con, had followed in his parents' footsteps.
By the time Minnis was 13, they said, he was living on the streets and supporting himself by selling crack. When the last question had been answered, the defense attorney leaned over and asked Minnis if he wanted to testify.
The 20-year-old, who showed up in court last week wearing a black USA T-shirt and baggy shorts, quickly shook his head. He did the same when Roanoke Circuit Judge Diane Strickland asked if he had anything to say before his sentence was imposed.
And with that, Minnis was sentenced to seven years in prison on three drug charges - the toughest punishment so far for the 53 people who were indicted in January in an undercover operation that targeted Roanoke's street-level crack dealers. Only one other person remains to be sentenced.
Nearly half of the people who were indicted along with Minnis were convicted but received no prison time, according to court records. Instead, judges sent them to alternative programs such as boot camp, drug court and treatment centers.
Of the remaining defendants, one was sentenced to five years in prison and the rest received terms of two years or less.
That's not enough for Lt. R.E. Carlisle, who supervises the city's drug enforcement efforts as head of the Roanoke Police Department's vice bureau.
Carlisle wonders why the average sentence for those arrested in the operation was about six months in jail, when possession of cocaine with intent to distribute carries a punishment of five to 40 years in prison.
"I think that when the penalty for trafficking in crack cocaine is nothing but a bluff and an empty threat, that sends the message back to the community that it's OK to go ahead and sell it," Carlisle said. "It is my opinion that those who would contemplate trafficking narcotics are weighing the risk of going to jail against the potential of making big money. And what I see is that they are choosing to traffic narcotics."
But others argue that longer prison sentences are not always appropriate for the type of drug dealers who appear most frequently in the city's courts.
The major players in the city's crack trade usually are transferred to federal court to face tougher, mandatory sentences - leaving to Circuit Court the street-level dealers and addicts who sell one rock just to get another one to feed their constant craving for the drug.
"They don't drive fancy cars; they don't live in nice homes, and they don't have semiautomatic weapons and all the other stuff you see on TV," said Greg Phillips, a Salem lawyer who has seen Roanoke drug cases both as assistant prosecutor and as public defender.
And even when stiff sentences are handed down by a judge or jury, some question how much weight the word carries on the streets.
"It doesn't hit the people who need to hear it," said Theo Petrocci, who deals with drug abusers as a counselor for the city's drug court. "Number one, they don't read the newspaper. And even when the news does get to them, it's meaningless.
"They look around, and they see a street corner that's open. And they think, 'I don't care what happened to the guy who was there before, I just know he was making a lot of money.'''
The futility of addressing the problem through law enforcement alone was evident Monday.
As Minnis was being sentenced, a grand jury just down the hall was in the process of indicting 55 more drug-dealing suspects.
"For every one they arrest," said Burton Albert, a Roanoke County lawyer who represented Minnis, "there are two more waiting to take their place."
Different standards, same prison time
Ironically, any perceptions that Roanoke drug dealers are getting a break may be based on laws that were passed as part of Gov. George Allen's push to abolish parole and what he called the "liberal, lenient" system it embodied.
As part of "truth-in-sentencing" laws that were passed by the General Assembly and took effect Jan. 1, 1995, convicted felons must serve at least 85 percent of their sentences. Under the old system, they could become eligible for parole after serving about one-fifth of their time.
Although the abolition of parole has resulted in longer sentences for violent and repeat offenders, other criminals - including drug dealers - are serving about the same amount of time as before.
But that's not the way it appears at first glance. For example, someone could be sentenced to 12 years in prison under the old system but get paroled after serving just three. Under the new system, the same offender would receive three years and serve most if not all of it.
"Under the old system, the general public and the Roanoke Police Department would be all fine and happy when a drug dealer got 12 years in prison," Phillips said.
"But now, he's serving the same amount of time as when he got 12 years. It just doesn't look as harsh."
Although drug dealing technically carries a sentence of five to 40 years, sentencing guidelines that judges are encouraged to follow in Virginia usually call for much less time. The range for someone with no prior record charged with possession of cocaine with intent to distribute is from seven months to one year and four months.
For someone like Minnis, who faced multiple drug charges and had a prior criminal history, the guidelines were more severe: from 41/2 years to about 71/2 years.
The guidelines - based on a statistical analysis of sentences over the past five years across Virginia - were designed to correct disparity by giving judges a historically based middle range of punishment that reflects the statewide norm.
In looking at the sentences drug dealers receive, it can be misleading not to take into account suspended time that often comes with the sentence, Assistant Public Defender Steve Milani said.
After offenders serve their time and are released on probation, they often get some or all of their suspended sentences reinstated for using drugs or committing minor offenses.
"The bottom line is that nobody falls through the cracks in a drug case," Milani said. "They have you under supervision for a considerable period of time."
Although a handful of charges have been dropped, most of the 53 people who were indicted in January have pleaded guilty, thus avoiding the likely prospect of a harsh sentence from a jury.
Roanoke juries traditionally have been tougher on drug dealers than judges are. Juries do not have the power to suspend sentences as judges do, and they are not informed of what the sentencing guidelines recommend.
With the abolition of parole and strong community sentiment against drugs, facing a jury in a crack case can be a gamble.
"It's worse than Russian roulette, because you know what's coming," Phillips said.
Higher-ups were target this time
Although many of the people indicted in the January sweep were addicts - "selling drugs just to be able to smoke drugs" - Regional Drug Prosecutor Dennis Nagel said the more recent operation was aimed at a different type of dealer.
After sending informants into the city's most drug-plagued areas to pose as customers over the past few months, Roanoke police presented a summary of their investigation to a grand jury Monday. The result: 96 indictments charging 55 adults with selling crack, heroin and marijuana, and another 14 charges against 12 juveniles.
"This sweep has picked up a large number of the more careful and more experienced drug dealers, who were caught despite their efforts to avoid detection," Nagel said.
How did that happen? One theory is that the addicts and small-time dealers indicted in the January sweep were being used by more sophisticated dealers as a buffer - insulating the higher-ups from the dangers of selling on the streets.
The earlier arrests flushed the more sophisticated dealers out in the open, forcing them to make sales or recruit new underlings, thus making them more vulnerable to police.
Still, most of the charges involved small amounts of crack sold in hand-to-hand exchanges, which leads some people to ask why police are not focusing on the bigger dealers who import large amounts of the drug.
"If they want to make a dent in the problem, why don't they go after the people who are bringing the kilos in?" said defense attorney Onzlee Ware.
Whether they seek the drug's exhilarating high or its lucrative earnings, the vast majority of dealers sentenced in Roanoke Circuit Court fit a common pattern - young black males who grew up in broken homes and disadvantaged neighborhoods, where selling crack is often seen as the best way out of a dead-end life.
They are, for the most part, like Carlos Minnis.
"He has grown up on the underbelly of our city," Albert said. "This is a person who was deserted by everyone. He was left to fend for himself."
Minnis did not immediately respond to a letter requesting an interview for this story - maintaining in jail the silence he kept in court, saying nothing about a life that his lawyer called "like something you might see on television."
"It's a very, very sad commentary on our society that somehow this young man was lost," Albert said, "and lost at such an early age."
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