A VIRGINIA SHERIFF IS CHARGED WITH SELLING SEIZED EVIDENCE

The sheriff of Henry County, Va., and 19 other people were charged
yesterday with taking part in a scheme to sell drugs and other
evidence seized from dealers back to the community.

The charges against the sheriff, H. Franklin Cassell, followed a
lengthy investigation by the United States attorney's office in Roanoke.

Federal investigators began to suspect that the Sheriff's Department
was involved in drug trafficking in 2005, officials said, when drug
enforcement officials in Philadelphia intercepted a package containing
the drug ketamine that had been mailed to a house owned by a sergeant
with the department. Ketamine is often used in so-called date rapes.

Among the 20 people charged are 13 current and former officers in the
department, a former United States Postal Service employee and a state
probation officer.

The United States attorney, John L. Brownlee, said at a news
conference that the scheme had involved officers and former officers
working with drug dealers to distribute ketamine, cocaine, marijuana
and steroids. The members of the department worked with a drug ring to
take a variety of items seized from criminals, including not only
drugs but also firearms, cash, automotive equipment and even lawn
mowers, the indictment said.

"It is disgraceful corruption that they would take narcotics seized
from the community," Mr. Brownlee said, "and then members of law
enforcement would put them right back out there."

The Associated Press quoted Sheriff Cassell's lawyer, John
Lichtenstein, as saying: " He's served with great dedication. Now we
get an opportunity to answer the accusations."

Charges in the indictment include racketeering conspiracy, weapons
violations, narcotics distribution, obstruction of justice and perjury.

Investigators said Mr. Cassell, who has been the sheriff since 1992,
had either ignored or encouraged illegal activities among his staff
and had told his officers to lie to investigators.

Mr. Cassell was quoted by investigators as saying that the only way to
acquire wealth was to be "a little crooked and not get caught," The
A.P. reported.

Mr. Cassell led a department of 96 officers in a county with a
population of about 58,000 near the North Carolina border. The area's
tobacco industry was replaced years ago by textile and furniture
manufacturing, but unemployment has climbed into the double digits in
the last few years.

The state police and other county officials are helping run the
sheriff's office in the wake of the arrests, officials said.

The investigation found that since 1998, "sworn officers, employees
and associates of the Henry County sheriff's office engaged in a
continuous scheme to steal narcotics, firearms and other contraband
from the seized evidence property room," a statement by Mr. Brownlee's
office said.

The indictment said Sheriff Cassell had "covered up these illegal
activities by failing to pursue investigations, by agreeing to
disclose sensitive law enforcement information to the offending
parties in order for them to avoid detection and arrest."

The package federal investigators intercepted had been mailed to
William R. Reed, a private citizen who told federal investigators he
had been the middleman in a scheme to buy and sell drugs with the help
of members of the Sheriff's Department and others.

The sergeant who mailed it to Mr. Reed, James A. Vaught, later agreed
to cooperate with investigators, officials said. Mr. Vaught told
investigators he had been paid off by a drug ring that included Mr.
Reed to use his house in Martinsville, Va., to distribute drugs.

The indictment also said Mr. Cassell had tried to help Mr. Vaught in a
money-laundering scheme "to disguise the source of monies represented
to have been derived from the distribution of cocaine."