Pubdate: Tue, 14 Aug 2001 Source: News & Advance (VA) Copyright: 2001 The News & Advance Contact: 101 Wyndale Drive, Lynchburg, Va. 24501 Website: http://www.newsadvance.com/ Author: Ron Brown DRUG CASE RAISES ETHICAL QUESTIONS A first-of-its-kind drug case in Lynchburg sent a jury home Monday afternoon without a verdict. But the prosecution of Gregory Usry Sr. poses a troubling question about the ethics of police in the recruiting and use of drug informants. Is it ever acceptable for a police officer to lie under oath, even to protect a drug informant? Deliberations in the case will continue today in Lynchburg Circuit Court after the jury considered evidence in the case for about three hours Monday afternoon. Usry was charged with maintaining a fortified drug house at 1915 Bluff Street until police raided the residence five days before Christmas. "As far as I can see, it was the first prosecution under this statute in Virginia," Deputy Commonwealth's Attorney Michael Doucette said. To make his case, Doucette had police cadets haul in a 300-pound door, which had been framed with sheet metal on both sides and adorned with an even heavier metal plate surrounding its deadbolt lock. Police said the door buttressed a no windows-no escape fortress in Usry's basement. Police found baggies of cocaine and marijuana scattered around the basement when a police department tactical unit entered Dec. 20. "One of the problems with a fortress is that just as there is no way in, there is no way out," Doucette said in opening arguments. "Strongpoints designed to keep people out often have the mirror effect of keeping people in. Forts become prisons." Fort Usry had some interesting features. For starters, police found about six or seven people hanging out in the basement a few minutes after the tactical team tapped on the door with a 50-pound battering ram. No answer. Three or four taps later no one came to the door. So, police decided to serve their search warrant upstairs on the first floor. After walking in, police still found no inside door to the basement, so they returned to the basement door and started yelling, "Police." Suddenly, the door swung open in the poorly-lit basement and police found the people lying on the floor inside with their hands reaching out. One by one, police took the people out of the basement and questioned them upstairs. When they searched Usry, they found $920 in cash on his person. Inside the basement, bags of marijuana and suspected cocaine were tucked under baseboard and hidden behind water pipes. Near one rock of crack cocaine, police found a water pipe used for smoking marijuana. Police found a total of 11 1/2 grams of cocaine in the house. Its street value was more than $1,000. The basement was also cluttered with chairs, beer, tools and some video games. But it was upstairs on the second floor where police made their most intriguing find. Usry provided them a key for a small, locked safe, which contained more than $6,300 in cash. A count showed that more than $620 of it was in rolled coins. But Usry's girlfriend, Brenda Haworth, testified the money was her's. She said she kept the coins for making change on a soft drink and potato chip concession she ran out of the basement. She said the bills were her lottery earnings. De Bruin produced two receipts to show Haworth had won several thousand dollars in the lottery the past couple of years. "That's a lot of potato chips," Doucette observed. But the lead narcotics officer in the case said Usry was trading in his chips during a meeting with police following the December raid. The narcotics officer said Usry started making overtures about wanting to become an informant shortly after his arrest. The officer is not named because he is involved in continuing narcotics investigations. "You missed it," the narcotics officer quoted Usry as saying. The officer said Usry told him that a kilo of freshly cut cocaine had just left the house immediately before police arrived. The street value of the drug would be more than $100,000. During the next several weeks, the narcotics officer and Usry started discussing terms for using Usry as an informant, the officer said. On the day of Usry's preliminary hearing, the narcotics officer said he was still trying to protect Usry as a potential informant. When defense attorney Scott De Bruin asked the officer if Usry had acknowledged knowing anything about any narcotics found in the house, the officer testified that he had not. De Bruin argued to the jury that if a police officer made a misleading statement under oath at the preliminary hearing, he would do it again. "What we have here is a lie," De Bruin said in his closing argument. "It was a lie about what occurred." Drawing on more publicized court cases, De Bruin beckoned images of police abuses like lying in the O.J. Simpson case or the racially- motivated Ramparts police scandal in Los Angeles. "We can't sit back and say Lynchburg is not Los Angeles," De Bruin said. "We've seen it here today." - --- MAP posted-by: GD