SBI TO INVESTIGATE AOC COCAINE ALLEGATIONS

RALEIGH, N.C. -- Attorney General Roy Cooper has requested a state
investigation into the former top court administrator's suspected cocaine
use in his office. "The attorney general has directed the (State Bureau of
Investigation) to investigate the matter," Noelle Talley, a spokeswoman for
Cooper, said Wednesday. "He felt like it needs to be looked into." Talley
would not elaborate on the SBI's assignment or Cooper's reasons for it.
John Kennedy was director of the state Administrative Office of the Courts
until he resigned July 24. His boss, Chief Justice Beverly Lake Jr., said
two agency employees last month reported to him that they saw Kennedy hide
things on his desk, The News & Observer of Raleigh first reported
Wednesday. Lake had an aide ask Wake County Sheriff Donnie Harrison to
search Kennedy's office in the state Justice Building on July 22. The
search turned up "trace amounts of cocaine," Lake said. Lake issued a
memorandum Tuesday describing the circumstances of Kennedy's abrupt
departure. It said Harrison's search corroborated "information about
possible cocaine use" by Kennedy. Lake demanded Kennedy's resignation July
23, and Kennedy resigned the next day. Kennedy, who has not been charged
with a crime, said told the newspaper this week that he has never used cocaine.

Harrison said that he saw something suspicious in Kennedy's office but
wouldn't say what. Wake County District Attorney Colon Willoughby said
Wednesday that he decided not to investigate Kennedy on suspicion of
cocaine possession largely because there wasn't any material he could have
arranged to have tested. "There was nothing collected or gathered to be
tested," Willoughby said in an interview. "I was under the impression that
there was nothing that could be collected and sent off for testing.

I'm sure the sheriff would have collected it if he could have." Therefore,
he said, he had no basis to charge Kennedy with a crime or to search his
car or home. "I tried to make the decision based on the evidence and the
facts as I understood them to be," he said. "I didn't think there was any
prosecutable case." Willoughby, a friend of Kennedy, worked closely with
him for 16 years at the Wake County Courthouse. Before going to work for
the AOC three years ago, Kennedy was Wake County's elected clerk of courts.

Willoughby said their friendship didn't affect his judgment. "I prosecuted
(Raleigh lawyer) Jim Blackburn, who was a friend of mine," he said. "I
prosecuted (former state agriculture commissioner) Meg Scott Phipps, who
was a friend.

I try to do my job based on the facts and the evidence, not based on who
people are." Under state court rulings, a small amount of drug residue is
enough to convict someone of cocaine possession, a felony.

But there has to be enough residue to permit chemical testing to determine
what it is. Veteran Clinton defense lawyer Doug Parsons, a former state and
federal prosecutor, said court rulings have said that drug dog indications
alone are not enough evidence to support a conviction, because they can be
unreliable. "None of us know what was or was not found," he said. "Based on
what I read in the newspaper, it would not be prosecuted. Unquantifiable
amounts of drugs don't have a lot of jury appeal."