JUDGE ORDERS HEARING IN BARRIET CASE

GREENSBORO -- Former Lexington resident Terrence Maurice Barriet will get a
court hearing on his allegation that Davidson County sheriff's deputies
planted the drugs that sent him to federal prison.

The hearing could potentially put former sheriff's 1st Lt. Scott Woodall as
well as current sheriff's Lt. Steven Jones on the witness stand to
establish which of their accounts of a 1999 search of Barriet's home is the
truth.

Woodall, now serving a drug-related sentence in the same prison as Barriet,
has helped Barriet's bid for freedom by providing two affidavits saying he
helped plant cocaine in a drain pipe under Barriet's apartment on Bristol
Street.

Jones, however, has helped the government's effort to keep Barriet off the
street by supplying an affidavit stating that he and Lt. Doug Westmoreland,
another former sheriff's officer now in federal prison on drug-related
charges, legitimately found a plastic bag containing crack cocaine in the pipe.

Barriet worked for the sheriff's office himself as a jailer for eight
months in 1992 until he was falsely accused of selling drugs, he states in
a court document. In the following years, he accumulated a long list of
criminal charges, including possession of drugs and drug paraphernalia,
carrying a concealed weapon and assault on a female. After the Bristol
Street raid, he pleaded guilty to possessing cocaine and possessing a
firearm as a convicted felon and was sentenced in June 2000 to 10 years in
prison.

Now Barriet is seeking to join more than 30 other state and federal drug
defendants who have had cases dismissed or convictions overturned since a
federal grand jury charged Woodall, Westmoreland and another former member
of the sheriff's office's narcotics squad, Sgt. Billy Rankin, in December
2001 with conspiring to distribute drugs and related crimes. In May 2002,
Barriet filed a Section 2255 motion to vacate, set aside or correct his
sentence.

According to court papers Barriet filed to support his motion, Woodall,
Westmoreland and Rankin were among narcotics officers participating in the
Bristol Street bust. After Woodall and Westmoreland "crashed" into a
bathroom where his wife was seated on the toilet and his children were
bathing, Barriet alleged, Woodall, Westmoreland and Rankin crawled under
the house, removed a drain plug below the toilet and returned with the
plastic bag containing cocaine.

In his affidavit, Jones states that he saw Barriet run into the bathroom
and close the door and that someone then flushed the toilet. He states that
he went under the house with Westmoreland and saw the plastic bag of crack
floating in the pipe under the commode.

But Woodall states in his second affidavit that he used a mobile telephone
to summon Westmoreland from the apartment back to the sheriff's office,
where they retrieved crack that was evidence in another case from their
office safe and arranged to plant it in the pipe under the apartment. He
states that Jones did not know where he and Westmoreland were at all times
or that the drugs were planted. He states that he has nothing to gain by
speaking up except "peace and a clear conscience."

Barriet's motion alleged violations of his rights to protection from
unreasonable search and seizure and from self-incrimination, and to
effective counsel and freedom from excessive bail. The motion also cited
discrepancies in the types and amounts of drugs listed in arrest and court
documents.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Wallace W. Dixon in Durham recommended that all but
one of Barriet's arguments be dismissed because a one-year limitation
period had passed before he filed his Section 2255 motion.

But Dixon recommended that a hearing be held on Barriet's right against
unreasonable search and seizure. He wrote that the indictments of Woodall,
Westmoreland and Rankin, also after the one-year limitation period,
constituted new evidence that made the search and seizure argument timely.

In Greensboro, U.S. District Judge Frank W. Bullock agreed this past Friday
with Dixon's recommendation and ordered Dixon to hold the hearing. The
hearing will give Barriet the chance to present witnesses to substantiate
his motion. No date has been set for the hearing.

Hearings are rare on Section 2255 motions. Many federal prisoners file such
motions, and in most cases judges deny the motions based just on the
written court pleadings.

Barriet also filed a motion seeking appointment of a private investigator
to question Westmoreland. While Barriet and Woodall are both at Manchester
Federal Correctional Institution in Kentucky, Westmoreland is at Loretto
FCI in Pennsylvania.

Dixon ruled the request for a detective invalid on procedural grounds, but
also indicated that the court will appoint a lawyer to represent Barriet at
the upcoming hearing. Until this point, Barriet has served as his own
lawyer on his Section 2255 motion.

In his second affidavit, Woodall offered to testify in court under
penalties of perjury about the Bristol Street raid. He might now get to
make good on that offer.