Laurel County, September 2003

HARD TIME; WHOSE CRIME?

Justice

"The Court will now state the sentence." David Perkins, who had pleaded
guilty to selling more than 5 kilograms of cocaine, was hoping the judge
would give him a light ride.

Under the federal point system used to measure a defendant's criminal
history, his score was zero. He'd cooperated with the U.S. attorney's office.

His court records had no mention of any cocaine being found on him.

The case was built largely on the word of criminals and the recordings
they'd made.

Plus, he knew that David Valentin was in the same court the month before,
and got just 12 months and a day.

"This court hereby commits you to the custody of the Bureau of Prisons to
be imprisoned for a term of 87 months."

Perkins could not believe his ears.

"You could've knocked me over with a feather," he said.

In the end, Valentin, a felon and admitted gang member who helped set up
the cocaine connection for Perkins, pleaded guilty to one of the gun
charges and to selling OxyContin. He could have been sent to prison for 63
months.

Because of his extensive cooperation, federal prosecutors asked the judge
to set Valentin's sentence below federal guidelines.

Prosecutors had said they might do the same for Perkins. They did not.

Federal law enforcement officers and prosecutors involved in Perkins' and
Valentin's cases declined comment.

Perkins has had plenty to say. "It's destroyed me," he said. " ... I ain't
got no record and going in there and packing all this time, that's wrong. I
don't care how nobody else looks at it."

Valentin, he said, "made a killing out of it," and he didn't get much time.

But Valentin said that, given his role in the organization, he didn't
deserve a stiff sentence.

"I was a small guy," Valentin said.

Although he said he was a small-time dealer, Valentin also fessed up to
being a big-time informant -- and, in the federal system, that pays.

Jerry Strunk, the man who introduced Valentin to Perkins, said he learned
that lesson firsthand.

When the DEA asks a defendant whether he has knowledge of someone else
being a drug dealer, Strunk said, "what are you going to do if you're
facing a lot of time? You're going to know them, aren't you?"

On the subject of Perkins, Strunk said, the DEA was clear: "They would love
to get some more stuff on him, is what they said."

He said he never sold Perkins out. Court records give no indication that he
did.

Strunk pleaded guilty to working with Perkins and Valentin to distribute
about 500 40-milligram OxyContin pills.

A review of state records found no criminal convictions under his name. He
was sentenced to 15 months, three more than Valentin.

Perkins said his attorney told him that the U.S. attorney's office has
offered to reduce his sentence this month if he testifies in two trials.

"I just don't think I'm going to testify for them," he said, "not the way
they've done me."