FORMER NYU STUDENT PLEADS GUILTY TO FELONY DRUG CHARGES

NEW YORK -- A former New York University student who was dubbed the
school's "pot princess" was sentenced Tuesday to five years' probation
as part of a plea deal that took effect after she completed a drug
rehabilitation program.

Julia Diaco, 20, of Rumson, N.J., was allowed to withdraw her guilty
plea to narcotics possession and sale and plead guilty to lesser
versions of those charges after the prosecutor told the court she had
satisfied terms of the plea deal.

Diaco pleaded guilty Sept. 9, 2004, to third-degree drug possession
and sale, quietly answering "cocaine" when state Supreme Court Justice
Charles Solomon asked her what she had sold to an undercover police
officer months earlier while a freshman at NYU. Either charge is
punishable by up to 25 years in prison.

Diaco's lawyer, Paul Shechtman, said his client's journey had been
long but successful. He said she is a student at a community college
in New Jersey and "is a very different person than she was 18 months
ago, and she's got a bright future ahead of her."

Shechtman said Diaco spent most of her rehabilitation time in
California.

Assistant District Attorney Jordan Arnold said after Diaco was
arrested in April 2004 that she had been running a drug market
featuring marijuana, cocaine, LSD, psychoactive mushrooms and other
hallucinogens out of her NYU dormitory room.

Arnold said then that she had sold drugs to an undercover officer
eight times _ in Washington Square Park, on West Fourth Street at
Sixth Avenue and inside NYU's Hayden Hall dormitory _ between Nov. 1,
2003, and April 21, 2004.

When Diaco was arrested near St. Mark's Place, Arnold said at the
time, she was carrying several ounces of marijuana and a scale and was
on her way to a prearranged sale of drugs to an undercover officer.
Local tabloids dubbed her the pot princess.

The prosecutor also said then that officers armed with a warrant
removed a stash of cocaine and marijuana from a safe in Diaco's Hayden
Hall room.