SPECIAL TEAM HOPES NEW "DRUG COURT" SAVES MONEY, PRISON BEDS AND SOULS

ASHEVILLE - One less ski-masked addict towering over a woman's bed in the
middle of the night. One less drunk crossing a double-yellow line and
killing somebody's kid. One less junkie walking down the street talking to
himself, making you quick to lock your car doors in panic.

One more person to help us pay taxes. One more customer for your business.
One more good parent who will have money to buy his children presents,
instead of your co-workers taking up one of those collections.

That's what a team of people including a judge and the county's elected
district attorney are hoping for with a brand new kind of superior court
aimed at helping the truly addicted get unhooked.

It's part punishment, part encouragement - but everyone agrees that
Buncombe County's new Drug Court is nothing like anything that's ever been
tried west of Charlotte.

Drug Court

It looks like a regular session of Superior Court. A judge enters the room
in his black robe, the attorneys stand guard at their huge desks, everyone
rises and the bailiff does the deep-throated "Oh yes, oh yes, oh yes," to
open the session.

The defendant's name is called, but this first client, an addicted woman on
Friday morning, will not have the luxury of her attorney speaking for her.
A defense attorney is nearby, but from now on in drug court, she'll have to
talk directly to the judge, no lawyer coming up with fancy phrases to get
her out of trouble.

Over the next year, a lot of people will be watching her and the other 50
people the drug court team hopes to enroll.

This first client, a woman who tricked a pharmacy to get prescription
pain-killers, stood before Judge Ronald K. Payne Friday morning on her own.

Her long-term fate will be determined over the next year. During that time,
she has to come to Drug Court every other Friday, meet the same judge and
team every other Friday, give two urine samples a week, submit to two home
visits a week, and among other things, go to up to five
Narcotics/Alcoholics Anonymous meetings a week.

In a year, if she's been sober and clean 90 days straight and met other
conditions, she could have her most recent drug charge erased and avoid prison.

The "Drug Court" Team has taken a few hits from critics who say it's too
much social work and not enough punishment.

But Judge Payne and others in the court system are sick and tired of
shipping drug addicts off to prison, only to have them get out six months
later and get hooked again.

"What we're doing obviously isn't working," Payne said recently at the end
of a day of regular Superior Court. "The courts have to be willing to
examine their role in the process. We are often the only place with the
authority to prompt a person to change."

If that doesn't make sense, he said, then consider the financial
advantages. The average cost of treatment is about $2,500 to $3,000 per
addict per year.

Cost of a year in a medium security, North Carolina prison: $26,000.

Saving money is a nice by-product of the program, Payne said, but it's not
the only motive. The real reason is wanting to turn lives around, create
good parents, good sons and daughters, husbands and wives. To help people
"learn how to live, not just exist," he said.

What it is, how it works

Only a few North Carolina counties have Drug Court. Charlotte has a busy
version, and other counties include Mecklenburg, Forsyth, Guilford,
Johnston, Carteret and Craven.

Certain people won't be allowed the chance: violent people, those who are
dealing drugs and those who might be under investigation for another crime
wouldn't qualify, said District Attorney Ron Moore.

Anyone with a serious mental illness would have to have that illness
treated first before qualifying for drug court.

Drug Court only happens for people who are proven to be truly chemically
addicted. They plead guilty during a regular session of court, then on
every other Friday, they show up for Drug Court - for a whole year, where
they talk about their progress.

Sometimes, they'll actually be sentenced but on probation until they either
try to or actually finish the program. Prosecutors will usually offer them
some incentive: dismissing the conviction, sparing them prison time or
dropping a felony down to a misdemeanor, said Assistant District Attorney
Al Williams.

But all those rewards come only after they've been through three stages.

Stage One:

Show up for Drug Court, which means every other Friday morning in Buncombe
County Superior Court. Stay all day, not just for their case.

Submit to two randomly announced drug screens a week and two random home
inspections/visits and curfews.

Go to five Narcotics/Alcoholics Anonymous meetings every week. Judge Payne
will ask leaders if the participant is really participating "or just
sitting in the back rolling their eyes and going to the bathroom every 15
minutes," he said.

If they're sober at least 30 straight days, they go to Stage II, where they
do all the above except:

Go to three NAA meetings a week, not five

Start GED classes or get a job

Get "sober" housing (no drug-using roommates)

If they stay sober for 60 straight days, they can go to Stage III, where
they have to do all the above except home visits and drugs screens are less
often. If they stay sober for 90 straight days, they're considered for
graduation.

The most important thing to Payne will be whether the participants are
telling the truth.

"What's going to be worse than a dirty urine screen in my courtroom will be
telling us you haven't been using, when the test shows you have," he said.
"We're going to teach responsibility in here."

No doubt, there will be people who won't make it, said Williams.

"You're going to have to take some people who are risky," he said. "They're
gonna' mess up. But you work them until they start to improve or they prove
to you they're never going to improve, they've not really hit bottom
yet...but the ones who are most honest with themselves are the ones who are
going to make it."

So far, it's not costing anything. The others on the team are already
working and will just be diverting their time to work together.

The others are Patricia Caufman in the Buncombe Public Defender's office,
Kim Gordon in Pre-trial Release; Kristen Warneke from Blue Ridge mental
health services; Quintin Miller from Asheville Police Department, Don
Fraser from the Buncombe County Sheriff's Department and Lori Anderson from
the Probation office.

Eventually, if more people sign up, a full-time case manager would be
needed. Payne says the team would apply for a grant to pay for the
position. The group figures it could handle about 50 clients a year.

If Drug Court clients make it all the way through Stage III, they have to
write a letter to Payne about how they'll deal with resisting the urge for
the rest of their lives.

"It has to be their writing - not their attorneys, no one else's," Payne
said. "I want it in their own words."

All the while, the atmosphere will be much less formal than a regular
courtroom. Payne said he'll try to be strict yet compassionate, firm yet
inspirational. And they'll always report to him.

"So they can't use the same excuse on a different judge every week," said
DA Moore.

Payne hopes for a little graduation ceremony right there in court, with
happy friends and relatives looking on and applauding liberation from drugs.

All in a place where relatives usually break down or storm out when liberty
is lost.

Payne plans to hand out a special coin to every graduate.

"I want them to keep it in their pocket or purse, and when they start to
get the urge to start using again, I want them to look down at it and say,
'No. If I graduated from that program, I can do anything.'

That might sound corny, he said, but don't laugh.

"Sometimes things like that matter a lot to people," he said. "Especially
to people who may never have accomplished anything else in their entire lives."