Alva Mae Groves to Be Buried Today

FREEDOM, THE HARD WAY, FOR 'GRANNY'

She Lived to 86 Behind Bars After Conviction in Drug-Dealing Conspiracy

CLAYTON -- Thirteen years after Alva Mae "Granny" Groves was locked
up for conspiring to trade crack cocaine for food stamps, she's
finally home. It took death to free her. Federal prosecutors wanted
the ailing great-grandmother behind bars for at least another decade
as punishment for her role in the family scheme.

Groves will be buried today in Johnston County. She died at a federal
prison hospital in Texas last week at age 86.

"It's a relief she's dead but it's a hurt. A real hurt we weren't
with her," said her daughter Everline Johnson of Red Springs. "What
could she have hurt?" In a brief letter mailed to Groves on her
deathbed, prison officials said her crime was too grave to allow her
to be turned loose. Groves tended her garden the day investigators
stormed her double-wide and hauled her to jail. Within a year,
Groves, 74 at the time, was sentenced to federal prison for 24 years
after pleading guilty to conspiracy to possess with intent to sell
and distribute cocaine and aiding and abetting the trading of crack
cocaine for food stamps.

Her family says prosecutors came down hard on her mostly because she
wouldn't help build a case that could lock up her children for life.
"My real crime ... was refusing to testify against my sons, children
of my womb, that were conceived, birthed and raised with love,"
Groves wrote in a 2001 letter to November Coalition, which rallies
support to those sentenced to prison for long stretches on drug offenses.

Groves became the face of a movement to lighten prison sentences for
nonviolent crack dealers.

As crack cocaine hit the nation's urban streets in the mid-1980s,
Congress enacted tough penalties for dealers. Lengthy mandatory
minimum sentences enacted then are still in effect today.

It's not clear how much Groves knew about the crack cocaine being
traded in her home. Groves' daughters swear she had no part in the
scheme but didn't force her kin to do business elsewhere.

Buddy Berube, lead investigator for the Johnston County Sheriff's
Office, insists Groves took part in the trade.

"She was a player, for sure," Berube said. "Not as big as her son,
but when he wasn't around, she would take care of things."

All told, five members of the Groves family were shipped off to
federal prison. Her son, Ricky Groves, is pulling a life sentence in
Butner. Three generations of Groves women landed at Tallahassee
Federal Women's Prison in 1996. Groves' oldest daughter, Margaret
Woodard, and Woodard's daughter, Pam Battle, were also convicted in
the crackdown. Groves was a sight in prison, said Garry Jones, a
retired correctional officer who knew her in Tallahassee. The oldest
inmate by at least a decade, Groves would sit beneath a tree in the
prison yard, unleashing stern warnings to younger inmates who flirted
with correctional officers and wore tight pants.

She once came down on Jones, then a lieutenant at the prison. "She
told me that she'd spank me herself if I didn't do anything about
these 'fast-tailed girls' having sex with the officers," Jones said.
"She told me 'I'm too old to be listening to all this moaning and
groaning. You better straighten this out.'"

Eventually, the officers were caught and fired, Jones said.