PARENTS SENTENCED ON LSD CHARGES

Daughter, Caught In Operation Babyface Sting, Had Accused Father,
Stepmother Of Buying The Drug

At their sentencing, both John Henry Davis and his wife, Laurie
Hicks-Davis, maintained their innocence.

Up until the end, John Henry Davis blamed his daughter.

He only admitted to possessing and distributing LSD to protect his wife and
younger daughter, he said. Someone had to take responsibility. He, as the
parent, would take that responsibility, he said.

But during Davis' sentencing hearing in Roanoke County Circuit Court on
Tuesday, Judge Diane Strickland said she didn't think Davis was taking
responsibility at all for LSD found in his home.

Last year, Davis and his wife were accused by Davis' 17-year-old daughter,
Amanda, of buying LSD and encouraging her to sell the drugs at her high
school. When police searched their home, they found 23 hits of LSD in a mug
and on sugar cubes in the freezer.

When Davis, away on business at the time, went to police, first he said the
drugs were Amanda's.

Next, he claimed the LSD belonged to him and his wife and that they kept it
for personal use.

Then, he accused police of tampering with the tape that held his admission.

"Whose LSD was it?" Strickland asked him when he took the stand.

"It sure wasn't mine, ma'am, because I wasn't even there," Davis answered.

Strickland apparently didn't like his answer, because she sentenced him to
four years in prison and ordered him to pay a $1,000 fine, suspending 16
years of a 20-year sentence for distributing and possessing LSD. The
sentence is nearly four times the guidelines that a probation officer had
recommended for Davis.

"You have laid all the blame at Amanda's doorstep," Strickland told him.

Strickland sentenced Davis' wife and Amanda's step mother, Laurie
Hicks-Davis, to 12 months in jail for the same charges and gave her a $500
fine, suspending most of a total 10-year sentence.

Both admitted to the charges last month - Davis, 45, pleaded no contest,
while Hicks-Davis, 34, entered Alford pleas. An Alford plea allows a
defendant to maintain innocence while acknowledging that the evidence is
strong enough that a judge or jury would convict. Still, both said they
were not guilty.

Amanda Davis went to police last September, before she knew she would be
charged for selling LSD to an undercover police officer who had spent 10
months posing as a student in the so-called Operation Babyface. She told
detectives of the stash in the freezer.

Tuesday, Hicks-Davis testified that she had confronted Amanda the night
before Amanda went to police. She said Amanda told her that the LSD had
been put in the freezer by a family friend "for Daddy."

When Hicks-Davis called her husband to tell him what happened, he told her
to put it back in the freezer, she said. "I'll be home tomorrow to deal
with it," she said he told her. But the police got there first.

According to Amanda Davis, drugs were always in the home, although her
father says he stopped using them in his 20s. Hicks-Davis told authorities
that although she had done drugs in the past, she didn't anymore.

"They were basically pushing me to ask around school, Amanda Davis said
after Tuesday's hearing. "Every time I turned around, they threw a new drug
under my nose."

Davis and his wife also have a 10-year-old daughter. When Child Protective
Services last year received a complaint that drugs were being used in and
supplied from the Davis home, a social worker found the complaint unfounded.

Convicted in Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court of selling LSD and
sentenced to community service and probation, Amanda Davis has lived since
last September in Georgia with her mother. The now-18-year-old graduated
from high school in June and has been working at a park for her community
service.

She's been clean for more than a year, she said.

"I'm glad it's over," she said after Tuesday's hearing.