ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, February 27, 1997 TAG: 9702270031
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: RICHARD FOSTER STAFF WRITER
Charges will likely be dropped against a majority of 41 suspected crack cocaine dealers arrested last month in Bedford County, following the heart-attack death of a federal drug informant who was the key witness against them.
"It's disappointing, but when the Big Boy in the sky calls you, you're going to go," Bedford County Sheriff Mike Brown said. "It's going to hurt us."
The defendants involved were charged last month in Operation Crack-Down, the largest drug sting in Bedford County history. Most of those charged were described by police as mid-and upper-level dealers.
The 48-year-old federal drug informant died Feb. 17, said police, who declined to give his name. He was a full-time federal drug informant who lived out of state and had worked in the Bedford County area for about a year. He had started out by working off drug charges unrelated to the Bedford investigation, said Dick McEnany, U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration resident agent in charge.
Lt. John McCane of the Bedford County Sheriff's Office said the informant will be missed.
"This is more of a personal tragedy for us, because we lost a friend as well as an informant," he said.
A few of the drug cases will proceed, but lacking the informant's testimony, the majority of charges will have to be dismissed, Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Joe Kuster said Wednesday. Preliminary hearings for most of the drug defendants were set for March14.
"It's nobody's fault," Kuster said. "The Sheriff's Office did a great job. They got their informant, groomed him, and went out and made the arrests. I think the cases were strong and they would've ended up in convictions, but it's just one of those things you can't control."
The Sheriff's Office had tape recordings and surveillance of all the informer's drug buys, McCane said, but prosecutors still needed testimony to back up the tapes and verify the chain of custody of narcotics from drug dealers to police.
"Any time somebody's unobserved, you have to have them present to testify," Kuster said. "You have to have someone who can identify a defendant as the person who sold the drugs; and for that, we need to have the informant."
Some of the cases will be prosecuted because law-enforcement officers witnessed the informant's drug purchases or arrested drug dealers as the informant made the buy, Kuster said.
Brown recalled that when he worked for the DEA years ago, he had a similar situation arise when an informant died in a car wreck and several defendants went free. McEnany said he recalls only two other informants dying before a trial in his 18-year career. "It's infrequent but unfortunate," he said.
Whether a case fails after an informant's death depends on whether law-enforcement officers had a back-up source to call on for testimony. In this instance, McEnany said, the informant had "a major part" in the cases against the suspected dealers.
McCane offered advice to suspects who might benefit from the informer's death.
"Those people who may get a free ride on account of this have an opportunity to straighten their lives out and do something other than deal drugs," he said. "Certainly, we would like convictions and lengthy sentences. But these people have been given a gift, and we want them to know if they continue to sell drugs, we'll get them again."
LENGTH: Medium: 67 linesby CNB