TEENAGER BUSTED FOR MARIJUANA GETS 26-YEAR SENTENCE

MOULTON - Webster Alexander lives in a brown trailer on the outskirts of
this Lawrence County town. The trailer, alongside a gravel road across
from a seemingly boundless cow pasture, is home to Alexander's young
cousins, a niece and nephew, his sister, his parents, a dachshund and
a cage of fluttering cockatiels.

It is also where, last winter and early spring, Alexander sold
marijuana, an ounce at a time, to someone he thought was a new kid at
school.

Alexander was 18, a senior at Lawrence County High with two classes
left before graduation. The "new kid" turned out to be an undercover
drug agent. And four sales, together worth about $350, landed
Alexander a 26-year prison sentence.

It was his first arrest.

Authorities have used the prosecution to sound a warning through the
halls of this rural school, where battling drugs and alcohol has
become a priority.

"Certainly it makes a point, a very big point, about accountability,"
said Lawrence County District Attorney Ed Osborn. His office handled
the plea bargain in January that sealed the stiff sentence.

It's probably tougher than anything handed down in the Birmingham
metro area, according to police and school officials. "In Smalltown,
USA, they're going to throw the book at them," said Birmingham Vice
and Narcotics Sgt. Richard Miller.

Prison terms of 10 years or more in drug cases are usually reserved
for repeat offenders, or crimes in which guns are used, said Allen St.
Pierre, executive director of the NORML Foundation, a Washington-based
group working to bring marijuana laws in line with alcohol and tobacco
laws.

"Putting a young man in jail for 26 years, on the face of it, appears
to be over-punitive, too expensive to the taxpayer and of no deterrent
value," he said.

Once news of Alexander's sentence hit the Internet, NORML came to his
aid. The group will lobby for a reduced sentence or probation.

Alexander was not arrested with marijuana at school. Prosecutors
secured enhancements on his sentence because of a state law that adds
five years when someone sells drugs within three miles of a school or
housing project.

Though on an isolated country stretch, the Alexanders' property met
both standards.

Many states have "drug-free schools" laws that up the penalties for
drug sales near schools and churches. Usually the boundary falls
within 1,000 feet. St. Pierre said he knew of no other state that
extended the area three miles.

Marijuana has been so easily available in this blue-collar town of
3,300 that Alexander smoked his first joint at age 9. It was six years
before he starting smoking regularly.

He doesn't deny he sold marijuana. It was easy money. But authorities'
depiction of him as some sort of kingpin is far from the truth, he
said. "I've been in maybe one fight in school my whole life, and now
I'm sentenced to 26 years in the pen," he said. "That doesn't make any
sense to me."

After his arrest and expulsion, Alexander found a private school where
he completed his classes and got a high school diploma. He also
graduated from a drug treatment program, found a job as a bricklayer
and enrolled in Calhoun Community College.

He's hoping for mercy, that those accomplishments will impress the
judge at a March 10 hearing where he will seek probation.

Alexander played football during most of his school years and summer
league baseball. He was a C student. "Everybody knew me. Everybody
liked me," Alexander said. "I loved going to school."

Undercover in school:

The crackdown that led to Alexander's arrest began soon after Ricky
Nichols took over as principal in fall 2001.

Nichols, an Army Reservist who target-shoots with sheriff's deputies,
considers himself a front-line soldier in the war on drugs. His
training includes police courses on drug identification. The drug task
force has given him pointers on searching students' cars for contraband.

Once a girl came in the school office asking for aspirin. She admitted
having a hangover and failed a breath test. Nichols searched her car.
"She didn't really have a choice," he said. "I don't have to have
probable cause. The police have to have probable cause."

Nichols says there were 26 drug and alcohol incidents last year, the
year Alexander was busted, at the school of 600 students. The students
were either suspended or sent to an alternative school 20 miles away.
Some dropped out and earned GEDs. Some just dropped out, he said.

Nichols believes every school has drug problems and conditions in
Lawrence County were not unique. What was unusual was that the former
sheriff offered to assign an undercover cop to the classroom.

"I would love it," Nichols recalled telling him.

So last February, a 26-year-old agent with the Lawrence County Drug
Task Force enrolled as a 19-year-old senior transfer.

The agent, who agreed to talk about his work as long as he not be
identified, said Nichols showed him photos of students suspected of
being involved in drugs. He was assigned to senior English and
government, both of Alexander's classes.

Courtney Bush, another targeted student, was in one of the classes.

The agent said he hit the jackpot Day One. He was sitting behind Bush,
and Bush's girlfriend announced her intentions to break up with him
because he was a drug dealer, the agent said. "I tapped him on the
left shoulder and said, 'Hey, can you hook me up?'"

On Day Two, he made a deal with Alexander.

During the break between classes, Alexander was sitting at a table
with some friends. The agent wandered over. He introduced himself as a
new student and began asking questions about where to "party."

Alexander told him that he was "the one to see about the smoke."

From Feb. 29 to April 3, the agent made three buys from Alexander and
two from Bush, according to court records.

The agent did some homework, took one test and made a good grade. That
worried the principal. He was supposed to be a troublemaker.

Suspicions that he was a cop began to brew toward the end of his eight
weeks there. To allay them, the agent and principal staged a scene
outside a classroom where the agent got in trouble for being tardy.

"I reamed him out. I tore him up. I ate him alive," Nichols said. "He
said a few choice words about me and bingo, he's back in the pack."

Authorities say they do not believe Bush and Alexander were working
together. Bush, now 20, whose case is pending, likely will face a
steep sentence as well. Unlike Alexander, he carried marijuana to
school, the agent said.

Alexander's 1976 Ford pickup was unreliable, so the agent gave him
rides home to make the buys. Alexander usually lit up a joint. The
agent had to fake it. "I would simulate, blow out instead of inhaling.
It made a lot of smoke and it looked real good," he said.

On April 9, during the agent's fourth buy from Alexander, deputies
swarmed the brown trailer.

Alexander's 22-year-old sister was cooking breakfast for her children,
then 1 and 4.

Deputies searched the home. Alexander was jailed overnight. He was
charged with four counts of distribution of marijuana, one count of
first-degree possession and one count of possession of drug
paraphernalia rolling papers, scales and a pipe. An uncle bailed him
out.

Also arrested was Alexander's cousin, Rodney Hicks, who lives nearby.
Hicks delivered marijuana to Alexander from an oak tree between their
houses, the agent said. He was charged with one count each of
marijuana distribution, possession and possession of paraphernalia.
Later that day, police arrested Bush in the school lunchroom. Of the
three, Hicks, 19, was the lone one to receive youthful offender status
from Circuit Judge Philip Reich.

Court-appointed attorney Chris Malcom of Moulton represents Bush, who
qualified for indigent defense.

"I don't think he had a serious drug problem, and there wasn't a ton
of money involved," Malcom said. "It kind of gave him a little bit of
identity, a chance to ride around with the cool kids."

Malcom said he was not surprised that Reich denied youthful offender
status for Bush and Alexander. It's consistent with the judge's
history. The seriousness of these cases lies in the multiple sales.
Nine times out of ten, a young person will get youthful offender
status under which authorities can keep them no longer than three
years for a first-time possession case, Malcom said.

Metro practices:

There are such wide disparities in drug sentences that it's difficult
to know whether the 26-year sentence is in line with what judges in
other counties and states are doing.

There were 58 cases of drug use and possession in Birmingham schools
last year. But police never assigned a narc to any classrooms. "We
don't put undercover people in school. I don't really think it's
necessary," said Lt. Robert Boswell, who supervises the uniformed
school resource officers in Birmingham schools.

A 2000 survey of Mountain Brook students found that 42 percent of
seniors said they used drugs other than alcohol. Car searches have
turned up marijuana and the prescription drug Lortab. But school
officials rarely, if ever, got police involved.

"In my experience there is not normally the quantity that would
warrant police taking action," said David Stiles, director of
organizational development at Mountain Brook Schools and formerly the
high school principal.

One researcher who studies these issues called the Lawrence County
sentence "a little on the shocking side."

"This kid is paying the price that very few other people involved in
using and selling a relatively small quantity of marijuana normally
face because of the decisions, somewhat arbitrary, of the adults
involved," said Malcolm Young, executive director of the Sentencing
Project, a Washington-based group that develops alternatives to
incarceration.

As a father of teenagers, Young said he recognizes the serious
challenge that drugs pose for schools. Yet, affluent kids in his D.C.
suburb always wind up in treatment, not court. "Kids that were dealing
much more than that kid never see the inside of a jailhouse," Young
said.

Family connection:

Alexander has opted to pay a private lawyer. Most of his paychecks
$3,000, he estimates have gone to legal fees. His parents help out.

Alexander's mother, Wanda, travels with a job training supermarket
employees. His father, Arnold Alexander, works construction as a
carpenter and welder.

Arnold Alexander, 46, was layered with jackets and coveralls for work
outside on a recent day so cold and icy that school was closed. He
took a break for an interview and rushed because he needed to be back
on the job.

He has fought his own battles with the law in Lawrence County. "I've
been busted for marijuana twice, and I've never got nothing like
this," Arnold Alexander said.

His cases have been for possession, most recently a 1999 case in which
he got caught growing two plants, he said. Both times, he received
probation.

"I've lived here in Lawrence County all my life, and I've smoked pot
ever since I was in high school," he said.

As he sees it, sending his son to prison will not curb drug use. "It's
as widespread as it ever was."

Neither father nor son believes that Webster Alexander was targeted
because of his father's past.

"My daddy's a good man. He took care of us our whole life," Webster
Alexander said. "I'm not here to blame anybody."