Series: Four Lives, One Last Chance - A Year In Drug Court: 1 Of 41

ACT I

Rod Charity gets up from his seat and looks down at a long list of names.

It's a simple one-page document that reads "Newport News Drug Court Status
Hearings" at the top. Yet behind each faceless entry, numbered one through
19, is the story of a struggling soul.

"Your honor," Charity says, glancing up at the face of the judge who waits
just a few feet away, "the next person I'd like to call is Vernon Mapson."

Vernon, a Newport News man with a defiant swagger, struts to the front of
the courtroom, pushes through the gate and takes a seat behind the table
normally reserved for prosecutors.

He sits in a plush chair between Charity, who is a parole officer, and Gary
Ford, a social worker and therapist. Vernon's attention seems to wander as
they tell the judge his story.

Mapson was locked up four months ago after violating his probation for
heroin possession. He was released from jail a week ago. He entered the
Drug Court program a few days later, and drug tests show he hasn't used since.

In less than a minute, Ford and Charity finish their dispassionate report,
close their case folders and sit down. That's when Vernon rises and stands
before the gaze of Newport News Circuit Court Judge H. Vincent Conway Jr.

"Mr. Mapson," the judge says. "So, how do you like the program?"

"Beats jail," he answers.

Then he shrugs.

Vernon's attitude is not uncommon in Drug Court, the place where the city's
most desperate and chronic drug addicts are given their last chance at
redemption. They come to the program directly from the corners and the
jails, their lives still governed by the harsh rules of the streets.

They are not violent criminals. They have not been convicted for dealing.
But they have entrenched addictions that make them some of the most
difficult people for the courts and treatment programs to handle.

These have become the guerrilla soldiers on the wrong side of the war on
drugs - the obstinate addicts who have their names inscribed on the
criminal justice system's revolving door.

Vernon comes to Drug Court with a five-year prison term hanging over his
head. That sentence was suspended when he agreed to enter the program, and
it will be erased if he graduates. But if he fails, Vernon could go to prison.

After he got out of jail, the people at Drug Court sat down with Vernon and
laid out the next 18 months of his life - if he stays in the program. Like
all Drug Court "clients," he must hold down a job, open a savings account
and create what they call a "stable living environment."

They told him he must go through group therapy with the Drug Court
counselors at least once a week and attend more group meetings with
Narcotics Anonymous, which is similar to Alcoholics Anonymous, three times
a week. They told him he'll have to submit to at least two urine tests
every week to prove he's clean, and he must report to the judge once a week
at first, less often as he progresses.

Vernon must meet these requirements if he wants to progress through the
program's four phases. Moving from phase to phase allows a client more and
more freedom, while symbolizing their achievements.

After four phases, Vernon can move to "after care" and become eligible to
"graduate" at an annual ceremony that is well-attended by local politicians
and leaders.

To graduate, Vernon will have to prove that he's growing and changing. The
counselors, parole officers and especially the judge will be watching.

They'll want to see him delve into his past through therapy sessions and by
writing an autobiography. They'll ask him to explore his addiction by
getting a sponsor to help him work his way through the 12-step Narcotics
Anonymous, or NA, program.

But Vernon is not one for introspection, and he comes into Drug Court
insisting there is no dark secret in his past that propelled him toward
drugs. It was just something he chose to do, he says, as if running the
streets was an adolescent option as viable as getting a job at McDonald's.

Now Vernon - still standing - finds himself before a judge who wants to
help him kick his addiction. For a man used to viewing courts and cops as
enemies, the experience has a disordered quality, as if he has fallen down
the rabbit hole.

It is also an odd experience for Conway, who knows some of his colleagues
on the bench think Drug Court confuses the role of a judge. They say it
turns them into social workers when they need to remain detached arbiters
of justice.

Conway joined Circuit Court Judge Verbena Askew, who helped found the
program in Newport News, to become only the second judge to handle Drug
Court cases in the city.

Unlike the critics, Conway and Askew see the program as filling the gaps
where the courts have fallen short. Instead of simply locking up drug
addicts or prescribing them a treatment regimen with few incentives, Drug
Court attacks their problems by dangling their freedom as a reward for
staying clean.

While the goal of Drug Court is rehabilitation, the judges do not hesitate
to use jail time to achieve those ends. If Vernon goes back to using drugs
or violates a Drug Court rule, Conway can "sanction" him with up to 10 days
in jail.

Some studies of Drug Courts around the country have found astonishing
success rates, but Conway and Askew say the program is by no means an
elixir for addiction - in Newport News or anywhere else.

Many who come before those judges struggle through multiple relapses. After
three setbacks, they order some into Serenity House, an in-patient
treatment center in Newport News. Some of them make it back to Drug Court;
others do not.

A few participants walk away from the program, becoming fugitives. When
they're caught, the deputies bring them before the judges in leg irons and
bright orange jumpsuits. They're usually sent to prison or a prison-run
boot camp.

Some of the fugitives pay an even higher price for returning to the
streets. One of the first clients to enter the Newport News program went on
the run until she ended up dead from an overdose. Someone at the Drug Court
office clipped her picture and obituary from the paper and tacked them to
the bulletin board. The woman's smiling face stared into the lobby for
months, serving as a ghastly reminder of where drug addiction can lead.

But if the threat of jails, hospitals and death were enough of a deterrent,
people like Vernon would never end up in Drug Court. Many addicts come here
with few or no job skills, little or no money, poor health and families
torn apart by their addictions. And to most addicts, the world of the
average citizen appears to be an unwelcome place, a world of low-paying
jobs inhabited by people who eye them with disdain.

When an addict has been using long enough, it seems easier to keep doing
drugs than to face this world and the mess they've made of their lives.

That's why Drug Court requires more than abstinence. If an addict is going
to stay off drugs, he must learn to navigate through society's ups and
downs without using a crack pipe as a compass.

"There's a lot for them to contend with in addiction and staying clean,"
Judge Askew says. "That's just the surface."

Drug Court doesn't strive to turn street-walkers and coke fiends into
doctors and lawyers. The successful addict will simply lead a normal life,
no longer rotating through the jails and the courts.

Vernon signed up for all this with reluctance.

A hardened drug user from the South Side of Chicago, he came to Newport
News in 1996, looking for a fresh start. Instead, he found the same
temptations, the same street corners and the same drugs. By 1997, he had
caught a heroin charge.

Despite his earlier convictions in Illinois, Vernon was given probation.
When he was busted again, this time for smoking marijuana, his probation
officer had him locked up.

In jail, Vernon heard about Drug Court from the other inmates, who warned
him to stay away from it. It's too tough, too strict, they said. You'll go
through all that trouble, then end up back here, facing the same five-year
stretch when you screw up.

So Vernon hesitated when his lawyer suggested that he enter Drug Court.
With his deep animosity for courts, counselors, parole officers and
virtually every form of authority, Vernon struggled with the idea of taking
on such a strict regimen.

Despite all that, he volunteered for the program. He tells everyone that he
simply weighed his options - five years in prison or 18 months in the
program - and came to the only sensible conclusion.

"When I signed them papers," he says, "I said, 'I'm a drug addict, not
stupid.' "

That's how Vernon ended up in Drug Court.