DATE: Monday, July 21, 1997                 TAG: 9707210053

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B5   EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA 

                                            LENGTH:   50 lines

VIRGINIA

Judge dismisses charges over scheduling error

CHRISTIANSBURG - A judge was forced to dismiss rape and sodomy charges against a Pembroke man because the county's top prosecutor made a scheduling error.

William Thomas Redd spent six months in the Montgomery County jail before his case reached trial. When his court date finally arrived April 23, his charges were dismissed.

Under Virginia law, a defendant must be tried in a circuit court within five months after authorities determine there was probable cause that a crime occurred.

Commonwealth's Attorney Phil Keith tried to indict Redd on related charges earlier this month, but a judge ruled that it constituted double jeopardy.

``I guess I'm at fault. I'll take responsibility for that,'' Keith said.

Keith said such a dismissal is rare. Out of the more than 1,000 cases his office handles each year, four or five are lost because of speedy-trial violations, he said.

Redd, 19, remains jailed on a robbery conviction.

Worker allegedly tried

extortion of Philip Morris

ROANOKE - A Radford man is accused of trying to extort money from Philip Morris, which he says was using asbestos-laced cigarette filters.

Bruce W. Rehm contacted an attorney at Philip Morris in late April and told him that the product the tobacco company was buying from the Hoechst-Celanese plant in Narrows contained asbestos, said Rehm's lawyer, Greg Phillips.

Rehm, a sheet-metal worker for a contractor that does work at the plant, arranged a meeting with a Philip Morris representative in Roanoke on May 1, where he discussed his concerns about the asbestos and then suggested that he wouldn't report the problem if the cigarette maker set him up in a business that would clean up the asbestos, Phillips said.

But the man Rehm was talking to turned out to be an FBI agent. The agent asked Rehm how much money he wanted, and Rehm told him $1 million for him and $1 million for a friend, according to the charge filed in U.S. District Court in Roanoke.

The request led authorities to charge Rehm with misdemeanor extortion, but Phillips said Rehm offered the dollar figure only after being pressed several times for an amount. If convicted, Rehm faces up to a year in prison and a $2,500 fine, Phillips said. KEYWORDS: RAPE SODOMY EXTORTION

Send Suggestions or Comments to webmaster@scholar.lib.vt.edu