ANTI-DRUG D.A. ARRESTED FOR DRUGS

Charged With Possessing Cocaine, Methamphetamine

PAMPA, Texas -- Rick Roach got elected district attorney in West Texas on a
vow to rid the streets of drug dealers and users, and he went after them
mercilessly.

Drugs, drug usage, drug trafficking has become a scourge in our society,
Roach thundered during closing arguments at a drug trial that sent a
30-year-old man to prison for 60 years in 2001.

Few guessed, until recently at least, the hypocrisy behind it all: Roach
himself did drugs.

Roach, 55, was arrested inside a courtroom Jan. 11 and charged with
possessing methamphetamine and cocaine. In February, he took a plea bargain
on one charge possession of a gun by a drug addict. He could get up to 10
years in prison when he is sentenced in mid-April.

Roach told The New' York Times that he had suffered from depression from
age 13, and that he used illegal drugs to medicate himself.

I just sort of, you might say, went nuts: I made irrational and wrong
decisions, he told the newspaper. There's no excuse. I've gotten what I
deserve.

Now under house arrest at his mother's home until sentencing, he declined
to comment to the Associated Press. An electronic monitoring device
prohibits him from venturing more than 200 feet from the house.

The tough-on-drugs D.A. won re-election in November in his five-county
Texas Panhandle district and was just days into his second term when he was
arrested.

John Mann, the district attorney who lost to Roach in 2000, said he noticed
a difference in the man about 18 months before Roach stepped down in
February Roach had kind of backed off drug prosecutions, Mann said.

'I think it was probably his inability to be coherent," Mann said. "I saw
him acting like a fool for a year and half."

Roach became prone to extreme mood swings and was sometimes incoherent and
paranoid, according to court documents. He also had lost 30 pounds and his
skin was sallow.