WITNESS TELLS OF STEALING MARIJUANA

During A Suspect's Trial, Man Testifies About Digging Up 258 Pounds Of The
Drug At The Old Chatham Landfill.

GREENSBORO -- On a cool, moonlit night in October 2000, four men armed with
shovels, flashlights and seed bags toiled in pairs for 2 1/2 hours to dig
up 258 pounds of marijuana from the old Chatham County landfill, one of the
men testified Monday at a U.S. District Court trial.

The men, who planned the theft for a week, followed a map drawn by a county
backhoe driver who helped bury the drugs, said James Benjamin Harris, a
Snow Camp man who pleaded guilty in May to conspiring to sell more than 110
pounds of the marijuana.

"We kind of hurried along to get out of sight," Harris said Monday in his
testimony against David Wayne Stout, 38, of Kernersville. Stout is accused
of conspiring with Harris and Gary Leslie Causey of Snow Camp to possess
and distribute the drugs.

Stout's trial, which began Monday, is part of a 23-month-old drug case that
has caused intense criticism of the Chatham County Sheriff's Office, which
allowed 5,000 pounds of marijuana evidence to be stolen, four-fifths of it
from a surplus Army truck parked behind the department, and the rest from a
shallow pit at the old county landfill. The drugs had been seized in
February 2000 during an undercover sting near Siler City.

On Monday, Harris told the court about meeting Stout, Causey and another
man -- who hasn't been indicted -- at Causey's race shop in Snow Camp at
11:30 p.m. on a clear Friday night in late October. Causey's father, Ted,
who was disabled and has since died, drove the men to the landfill in his
Mazda truck, Harris testified.

When Ted Causey dropped the men off, Stout told him to eat the group's map
of the landfill if the police stopped him, Harris testified. Stout had
acquired the map from Jody Mitchell Brafford of Goldston, a county backhoe
driver who testified Monday that he stole marijuana from the landfill in
broad daylight three times the week after he helped bury it. Brafford
pleaded guilty in May to distributing about 80 pounds of the drug.

Harris, who has worked burying telephone lines for 15 years, said it was
easy to find where the marijuana had been buried because the dirt wasn't
compact. After the men finished excavating the drugs, they filled the
4-foot hole with wooden pallets they found nearby, replaced the dirt and
covered the spot with straw.

Ted Causey, the driver, had returned after an hour to pick up the first
four bags of marijuana, then after another 1 1/2 hours to pick up the men,
their equipment and more drugs, Harris said.

"Me, [Stout] and Gary got in the back [of the truck] again and laid on top
of the marijuana," Harris said.

Back at Gary Causey's race shop, the men weighed the drugs with a scale and
decided to split it evenly five ways, Harris said. Because the marijuana
was caked with dirt and had a little mildew, Ted Causey offered to clean it up.

On Dec. 7, 2000, Harris was caught trying to sell 50 pounds of the drugs to
an informant, said Randall Galyon, assistant U.S. attorney. Harris turned
Causey in to law enforcement, then both men helped catch Stout by
tape-recording conversations with him. The jury is expected to hear those
tapes when court resumes today.

In his opening statement Monday, Stout's attorney, Amos Tyndall, told
jurors they would hear evidence that his client didn't want any part of the
marijuana. Each of the other men, he said, had specific roles in dealing
with the drugs. Gary Causey coordinated the group, his father cleaned the
marijuana, Harris sold the drugs and a fourth man stored them.

"Everybody had a role except Mr. Stout," Tyndall said, "because he had told
them, 'I don't want anything to do with it.' "

Causey, Harris and Brafford all are scheduled to be sentenced Sept. 3.
Stout's trial will resume at 9:30 a.m. today.