JUDGE IMPRISONS QUADRIPLEGIC MAN

Louis E. Covar has been in a wheelchair for 35 years, unable to do more
than raise his shoulders. On Thursday, he began a seven-year prison sentence.

His crime: smoking marijuana.

Cost to taxpayers to keep him behind bars: $258.33 a day and $660,000
during seven years.

"If I had another alternative, I would do it," Mr. Covar, 51, said Thursday
at his probation revocation hearing in Richmond County Superior Court.

He has tried many different drugs during the past three decades to ease
painful muscle spasms he has suffered since July 4, 1967, when he broke his
neck. His doctors continued to prescribe narcotics, the latest of which was
40 milligrams of Valium a day, he said.

"I don't know where I am half the time I'm taking that," Mr. Covar said.
Smoking marijuana eases the pain but leaves his mind clear so he can at
least communicate, he said.

"I'm already in prison in my body, and they want to put me to sleep all the
time," Mr. Covar said of doctors.

When Judge J. Carlisle Overstreet sentenced Mr. Covar last March to seven
years of probation for the felony offense of marijuana possession, he
scolded the quadriplegic.

"I'm not telling you to violate the law, but keep it to yourself. Don't get
others involved," Judge Overstreet said March 26. Mr. Covar had two
previous marijuana convictions -- one for possession and one for sale.

"I was keeping it to myself," Mr. Covar said earlier this week.

Richmond County sheriff's Investigator Dale Pittard and five other armed
officers entered Mr. Covar's Fernwood Circle home Jan. 25 with a search
warrant. They found 36 grams of marijuana, the investigator said.

Officers had received anonymous complaints on the drug hot line, and they
saw people entering and leaving Mr. Covar's home; they stopped some
visitors and found marijuana, Investigator Pittard said.

Asked by defense attorney Hugh Hadden how many people were stopped and
searched in the past year that drug agents have kept Mr. Covar's home under
surveillance, Investigator Pittard didn't have an answer. He couldn't say
how many people were stopped and searched when no drugs were found. Nor
could he name anyone charged with drug offenses after leaving Mr. Covar's home.

Mr. Covar's probation officer, Kathy West, said Thursday that Mr. Covar had
been reporting and paying off the $1,000 fine that Judge Overstreet imposed
last year. The probation violation was based solely on his January arrest.

Mr. Hadden argued Mr. Covar has kept to himself, as the judge suggested
last year. Mr. Covar is caught between treating a painful condition with
legal narcotics that rob him of mental clarity and smoking the illegal
substance, Mr. Hadden said.

Assistant District Attorney Jason Troiano argued that Mr. Covar admitted
having the marijuana.

Judge Overstreet revoked all seven years of probation, which sent Mr. Covar
to a cell Thursday at the Richmond County jail.

It will cost taxpayers $258.33 a day to keep Mr. Covar behind bars,
according to the Georgia Department of Corrections. That's $94,290.45 a
year and, unless he is paroled early, more than $660,000 for seven years. A
typical prisoner costs taxpayers $47.63 per day.