ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, January 24, 1997 TAG: 9701240070
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: FINCASTLE
SOURCE: MATT CHITTUM STAFF WRITER
PENNY STALLINS admitted her cocaine addiction but denied being a dealer. A Circuit Court judge, however, said the former teacher had broken a trust, and sentenced her to 6 months in jail.
Penny Stallins is going to jail, despite efforts by her attorney to portray her as an addict duped by police and a physical wreck not fit for incarceration.
Botetourt County Circuit Judge George Honts III said he had to weigh the fact that she had "betrayed a trust" against a "lifetime of good deeds," noting the Salem golf standout's career as a teacher.
He sentenced Stallins, 45, to six months in the Botetourt County Jail for possession of cocaine with intent to distribute it. She pleaded no contest to the charge in October. Stallins must also pay a $5,000 fine.
In December, Salem Circuit Judge G.O. Clemens sentenced Stallins to 10 days in jail for possession of amphetamines and cocaine and possession of marijuana with intent to distribute it, but then converted the jail time to giving 10 anti-drug speeches.
Botetourt County Commonwealth's Attorney Joel Branscom told Stallins that state sentencing guidelines recommended 18 months in prison for her, and asked why she should be sentenced any differently from anybody else.
"I dispute that I've been a drug dealer," Stallins responded. She explained that when she bought 2 ounces of cocaine from a police informant in the parking lot of a Botetourt grocery store last June, it was as a consumer who planned to share it with her friends.
She called herself an "enabler" and said she was ashamed she had enabled her friends to do drugs.
Later in the hearing, Branscom mocked Stallins' rhetoric.
"Dee's enables me to get a hamburger at lunch," he said, referring to the popular Fincastle lunch counter. Going to Dee's Village Deli Shoppe to get two hamburgers might make him a consumer, he said, "but if I go down and buy 500 hamburgers, I'd better be a dealer."
Stallins' attorney, William "Buck" Heartwell, argued in closing remarks that the reason Stallins bought as much cocaine as she did from the informant was that it was such a good deal.
The primary evidence of Stallins' intent to distribute was the amount of cocaine she bought, he said, and it was the commonwealth, not Stallins, that chose the amount she purchased.
Stallins was arrested as part of what police call a "reversal." When a dealer is arrested, police sometimes work out an agreement by which the dealer sets up buys so police can make more arrests.
Timmy White, a dealer, agreed to call Stallins and set up a purchase at the grocery store. Stallins bought one ounce for $1,200 and took a second ounce on credit.
Stallins was caught as an addict, not another dealer, Heartwell said.
"She would have come for a gram. She would have come for a half-gram," he said. "But the commonwealth puts the 2 ounces out there and gave her a `bargain basement' deal on it."
Branscom did not dispute that Stallins was set up.
"I hope the word gets out," he said, almost angrily. "It's a dirty business, and those are the rules we play by."
Throughout the hearing, Heartwell reminded the court of Stallins' physical ailments. Stallins enumerated them from the witness stand: severe arthritis; diabetes; a degenerative disc in her back; carpal tunnel syndrome; sleep apnea so severe she must sleep hooked up to a machine that keeps her breathing through the night; cardiac arrhythmia; and a polyp on her uterus for which she will have surgery next week. Stallins also said she has been diagnosed with depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder. She is receiving counseling for her drug problem.
Several friends and her mother praised her as a fine woman they trusted with their children and a wonderful neighbor who put eggs on all her neighbors' lawns every Easter.
"She stands before you at ground zero today," Heartwell said. "She is as low as she can get." She has lost her good name in her community and has been punished enough with humiliation, he said.
But after receiving assurance from Sheriff Reed Kelly that accommodations could be made at the jail to handle Stallins' health problems, Honts told Stallins to report to jail Feb.17.
There was one Penny Stallins sitting in court, telling of her addiction to cocaine in the face of all her physical problems, Honts said, "but there's another Penny Stallins that was running wild out there."
LENGTH: Medium: 85 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: (headshot) Penny Stallins. color.by CNB