MAN FOUND NOT GUILTY OF OPIUM TRAFFICKING

YORK -- Yer Vang lived through a slave labor camp and escaped being hunted
by communists in Laos and Vietnam. But this Hmong man's escape from a
possible 25-year prison term on an opium possession charge came from a
dozen York County jurors.

Vang, 44, was found not guilty of opium trafficking Wednesday night after a
three-day trial. The construction worker had said in court he is an opium
addict who possessed more than three-quarters of a pound of the sticky,
brown poppy resin last October near York. Wednesday night he went home to
his wife and 11 children, his lawyer Chris Wellborn said.

And he went home to his addiction.

The 310.26 grams of opium found in Yer Vang's possession fed Vang's
addiction and nothing else, Wellborn said.

"This is a victory for common sense and what's just," Wellborn said. "I
don't see that it benefits the people of South Carolina or this community
to put an addict in jail for 25 years."

But prosecutor E.B. Springs didn't buy that. Vang admitted in court to
using opium in a house where he lived with his family over 10 years.

"It doesn't matter that he's an addict," Springs said. "Most crack dealers
are addicts."

Opium is a narcotic in the same family as heroin and morphine, Springs
said. But Wellborn said opium is used by addicts and not sold and dealt
like street drugs.

When drug agents raided Vang's house in October 2003, they found him
sitting in a chair smoking opium, Springs said. The raid came after
undercover police bought two pills of Ecstasy from Vang's teenage son,
Springs said.

Both sides agree Vang told police he had opium and that no evidence was
presented that Vang tried to sell opium.

But Springs never argued to the jury Vang sold opium because he didn't have
to. Trafficking offenses are based on weight, he said, and this opium
seizure was the largest in York County's history.

Vang would have pleaded guilty to simple possession of opium to avoid a
trial, Wellborn said, and he is seeking drug treatment.

But the only concession prosecutors offered was a sentence of nine years if
Vang pleaded to trafficking, Springs said, and reducing the charge was
never an option because of the quantity of drugs. Simple possession carries
up to two years, he said.

"To have somebody plead guilty to simple possession would be absurd,"
Springs said. "Just having it in this community is like toxic waste."

Vang faced a minimum of 25 years if convicted.

Springs said he took the case to trial without hesitation.

"He admitted he had the drugs," Springs said. "The law says you can't
possess the drugs."

Wellborn laid out to the jury the horrific tale of Vang's life before
arriving in America and then York about four years ago. The Hmong, an
indigenous mountain people in Southeast Asia, are persecuted by communist
regimes for having aided American soldiers during the Vietnam War.

Most of the refugees who made it out live in California, Minnesota and
other Midwestern states, Wellborn said. The Charlotte/Gaston County, N.C.
and Hickory areas in North Carolina also have substantial Hmong
populations. Some estimates have the Hmong population over 300,000 in America.

Vang was drafted into military service at age 13, then was captured by the
North Vietnamese and spent two years in a prison camp. After his release in
1975, Vang walked across the mountains to a Hmong village, where he was
nursed back to health with opium.

"They have used opium, all they have at their disposal, for more than a
thousand years," Wellborn said.

By 1978, Vang escaped to Thailand and eventually was repatriated to America
with tens of thousands of other Hmong.

A Hmong expert from Minneapolis testified in Vang's trial that opium is
common among Hmong, Wellborn said. Some Vietnam veterans attended the trial
to support Vang along with his family, Wellborn said.

Vang had kicked opium but started again about 10 years ago because of
stomach ailment, Wellborn said.

During deliberations, jurors sent out a note asking if they had to follow
the letter of the law or the spirit of the law, Springs said, and soon
after returned the not guilty verdict.

"The victim here is the community," Springs said. "They (jurors) felt
sorrier for the defendant than they did for the community."

But Wellborn said this case shows that all drug cases aren't the same. Yer
Vang is an addict who has no criminal record and didn't sell drugs to
anybody, Wellborn said, but the state of South Carolina had Vang pegged
worse than a street crack cocaine dealer.

"This is a screaming example of why we can't lump everybody into the same
boat," Wellborn said.