EX-DEPUTIES' ACCOUNTS OF DRUG RAID DIFFER

DURHAM -- Current and former members of the Davidson County Sheriff's Office's
vice/narcotics unit squared off Monday in U.S. District Court over a Lexington
crack cocaine dealer's bid to shorten his prison sentence.

Former 1st Lt. Scott Woodall and former Lt. Doug Westmoreland, now in federal
prison themselves, presented dramatically different versions of a May 22, 1999,
bust at the Bristol Street apartment of Terrence Maurice Barriet - with Woodall
saying they planted an ounce of crack but Westmoreland saying they didn't.

Lt. Steven Jones and Lt. Todd Kates, the first two men through the door that
night and still employed by the sheriff's office, also testified. In the
process, Woodall revealed that he has given information to the Federal Bureau
of Investigation about the activities of his former boss, suspended Sheriff
Gerald Hege.

Barriet, 33, is serving a 10-year sentence in the Federal Correctional
Institution at Manchester, Ky., for possession of crack and possession of a
firearm by a convicted felon. On the witness stand Monday, he admitted selling
crack in Lexington for five or six years and to buying and selling some earlier
on the day of the Bristol Street bust, but he denied having any drugs when two
vehicles filled with narcotics officers roared up shortly after 9 p.m.

Officers testified that Barriet went running toward his bathroom, where his
wife was sitting on the commode and his daughter was taking a bath. The toilet
flushed, and although Barriet denies disposing of any drugs, narcotics officers
said they found a plastic bag of crack in a discharge pipe under the house.

Barriet pleaded guilty to the drug and firearms charges in January 2000, but in
May 2002 filed a Section 2255 motion to vacate, set aside or correct his
sentence. Then on Sept. 11, 2002, he looked out on the Kentucky prison's
exercise yard and saw one of his accusers, Woodall, who had just arrived to
start serving a 27-year sentence for conspiracy to distribute marijuana,
cocaine, steroids and Ecstasy, extortion and carrying a firearm during a crime
of violence. Woodall was one of five law enforcement officers, including
Westmoreland and Sgt. Billy Rankin, another county narcotics officer, convicted
last year after a major probe by the FBI and the State Bureau of Investigation.

"At first I didn't know it was him because he had lost so much weight," Barriet
said. "I asked him how much time he got and he said 27 years. I said, `You
deserve every bit of time you got.' He said, `You're right.'"

The next day, Woodall wrote an affidavit supporting Barriet's Section 2255
motion and saying officers had planted crack in a drain plug under the house.
"Because it's the truth," Woodall testified when Barriet's lawyer, Brian Aus of
Durham, asked why he provided the affidavit. "I had changed my life and I
wanted to show everyone that I could have integrity again. I had embarrassed my
family." He said no when asked if Barriet had made any threats or promises to
him.

The same week Woodall wrote a letter telling the FBI that the drugs in
Barriet's case had been planted. After his conviction, the FBI had asked
Woodall to admit every illegal act he had committed, but in 12 to 15 hours of
debriefings, he had failed to mention Barriet. During those debriefings,
Woodall testified, he did talk with the FBI about Hege, who now is under
indictment on state charges and facing a removal hearing next month. Since
going to prison, Assistant U.S. Attorney Sandra Hairston told the court Monday,
Woodall has written the FBI 15 times.

Woodall testified Monday that when officers found paraphernalia but no drugs in
Barriet's house, Westmoreland suggested extraordinary measures. He said they
drove a short distance to the vice/narcotics unit's office on First Street and
retrieved from a safe there an ounce of crack left over from a 1997 case
against Richard Baldwin, a Thomasville man in federal prison for possession of
crack with intent to distribute. Then they returned to Bristol Street and
inserted the drug into a pipe under the house, Woodall said.

Kates, the main investigator on the Barriet case, testified that he did not see
Woodall or Westmoreland leave during the search of the apartment. He also
testified at length about how the drugs from the Baldwin case might have ended
up in the vice/narcotics unit's safe.

Jones, a former vice/narcotics unit member now assigned to the sheriff's
office's new professional standards division, stuck closely in testimony Monday
to what he wrote in a report on the raid and in an affidavit he provided for
the government in response to Woodall's affidavit. In the affidavit, he said
Westmoreland had unscrewed a clean-out plug directly under the commode and that
he looked up into the pipe and saw plastic floating.

Westmoreland, however, testified that after he checked the clean-out plug, he
sawed a pipe in half 20 feet away and found the bag of crack 5 or 6 feet up the
pipe. He said he and Jones used a coat hanger from the apartment to extract the
drugs.

Westmoreland denied telling Woodall, his former work partner and friend, that
they needed to plant drugs, retrieving drugs from the vice/narcotics office or
placing the drugs in the pipe.

"So why would he say that?" U.S. Magistrate Judge Wallace W. Dixon, who
presided over Monday's hearing, wanted to know.

"I don't know," Westmoreland replied.

Dixon closely questioned Barriet on why he ran to the bathroom instead of the
front door when the deputies arrived. The magistrate judge also pressed Jones
for more specifics about the plumbing under the house.

Dixon said he will review a hearing transcript and make a recommendation to
U.S. District Judge Frank W. Bullock in Greensboro. Bullock will decide whether
Barriet merits relief under his motion.

Hairston said that even if Bullock sets aside Barriet's drug conviction, his
firearm conviction should stand.