SHERIFF-PROSECUTOR FEUD MUDDIES NECK GRAND JURY'S WORK

A long-simmering feud between Richmond County's top two law enforcers has
boiled over into a court case and criticism of a grand jury.

Sheriff Gene E. Sydnor said he is "completely disillusioned" with the ways
and results of a regional drug grand jury headed by Commonwealth's Attorney
Wayne L. Emery.

"I'm not having anything more to do with it," Sydnor said. "All they're
doing is hauling in the same bunch of black, low-level drug users and
making a whole lot of useless work."

Sydnor said the problem, in a word, is Emery.

"He just doesn't know how to talk to people," Sydnor said of the
Harvard-educated prosecutor. "The grand jurors themselves are very
conscientious, but they're being presented with information they don't need
to hear."

The Multi-Jurisdictional Grand Jury headed by Emery was formed in 1997 to
serve Essex, Richmond, Lancaster, Northumberland and Westmoreland counties.
It questions drug suspects twice a month in Warsaw. It issued 206 drug
indictments in 1999 and 172 in 2000.

Emery would not release details of the nature, venues and outcomes of grand
jury's indictments. Nor would he comment on his differences with Sydnor.

Other Northern Neck law-enforcement officials call the grand jury an
efficient legal tool to combat what they see as serious drug problems in
the Northern Neck.

But Sydnor said his nine deputies no longer provide security for the panel.
Bailiffs are now provided to the grand jury by other sheriffs' offices.

And Sydnor has also stopped state funding that used to pass through his
office for the $13,000 salary of a grand-jury clerk who works in Emery's
office, 250 feet away from Sydnor's. The five grand-jury counties will pay
the clerk's salary next year.

Tensions between the sheriff and Emery erupted earlier this month in a
confrontation between Sydnor and the grand-jury clerk.

Clerk Cheryl S. Sweet of Warsaw has charged Sydnor with assault, claiming
that in a shouting match Sydnor nudged her, grabbed her arm and forced her
out of his office.

"There was no assault," said Sydnor, who has suspended himself from duty
and taken a job delivering building supplies until his trial. A trial date
will be set Friday in Richmond County General District Court.

Emery has recused himself from prosecuting Sydnor. Circuit Judge Harry T.
Taliaferro III yesterday appointed Prince William County Commonwealth's
Attorney Paul B. Ebert, or one of his assistants, to handle the case.

In a statement, Sweet said she was delivering a grand-jury subpoena to the
Sheriff's Office on June 5 when Sydnor "hollered at me, and I hollered back."

It was not the first time, according to Sweet, whose statement said Sydnor
"has raised his voice to me many times in the past."

"Sheriff Sydnor again got very close to my face, hollering that I was not
the boss, that he was the boss; that Wayne Emery was not the boss, he was
the boss," Sweet said.

She said Sydnor threw the subpoena on the ground, and she slammed the door
to the sheriff's office in his face.

Emery and Sydnor come from vastly different circumstances.

Sydnor, 51, is a son of a large Northern Neck family. His ancestors served
as Northern Neck sheriffs in the 18th century. His mother died when he was
11, leaving his father to raise the eight children in the family.

A graduate of several police academies, Sydnor served for three years as a
policeman in the District of Columbia before becoming a Richmond County
sheriff's deputy.

He worked as a deputy for 18 years before being elected sheriff in 1991. In
1997, he gained national attention when he sidelined a band he thought was
marching too slowly in a Warsaw parade.

Sydnor makes $53,000 a year as sheriff.

Emery, 65, was born in Pennsylvania. He received his undergraduate degree
from Harvard and his law degree from Georgetown.

He was an attorney for U.S. Steel in Pittsburgh before retiring and moving
to the Northern Neck about nine years ago.

Emery was formerly married to Anne Tayloe and lived at Mount Airy, a
mansion that has been in the Tayloe family since it was built in the 1750s.
He and Anne Tayloe are now divorced.

Emery makes about $103,000 a year as commonwealth's attorney and county
attorney.

Emery and the commonwealth's attorneys in the other four counties bring
cases to the Northern Neck grand jury, but he has the lead role because the
panel is based in his jurisdiction. It is one of nine multijurisdictional
grand juries operating in Virginia, most of which specialize in drug crimes.

State law gives special grand juries a six-month term renewable by the
Supreme Court of Virginia. The grand jury in the Petersburg-Chesterfield
area has been in existence for 16 years, a court official said.

Grand-jury activities and members are secret. The panels subpoena witnesses
and interrogate them under oath. Witnesses who refuse to testify can be
jailed for contempt. Witnesses who lie can be charged with perjury.

Emery has obtained several perjury convictions of witnesses who lied to the
grand jury.

Westmoreland Commonwealth's Attorney Peggy Evans Garland said the grand
jury is a "very effective law enforcement tool."

"It's been very productive, but it could be more productive if the local
sheriffs' departments had the staff and resources to pursue leads quickly,"
she said.

"I love it," said Northumberland Commonwealth's Attorney R. Michael
McKenney. "The grand jury allows us to take evidence under oath and to
preserve that evidence by transcript. It's also a venue for local
authorities to cooperate in drug investigations."

McKenney said the grand jury subpoenas every person convicted of a drug
crime in the Northern Neck area and questions them under oath about their
drug sources and friends.

The grand jury also compels testimony from probationers and parolees who
test positive for drugs, he said.

Emery called McKenney's description of grand-jury activities "inaccurate,"
but would not elaborate.

McKenney cited the case of James Aric Noel as a grand-jury success story.

Noel, McKenney said, was a Northumberland drug dealer with ties to Newport
News and New York City. The prosecutor estimates that Noel and his cadre
distributed as much as 30 kilograms (66 pounds) of crack cocaine to
Northern Neck users.

Noel was indicted by the grand jury on seven cocaine charges in 1999. The
case was eventually turned over to federal authorities, who indicted Noel
on 21 drug charges. Some of them carried possible punishments of life in
prison, said Bruce S. Hough, an FBI agent in Fredericksburg.

Noel pled guilty to one conspiracy count last year and was sentenced to 30
years. A dozen or so of his associates are serving time in federal prisons.
A dozen more were convicted in Northumberland County.

Hough said the Northern Neck grand jury "has been a blessing" for the FBI.

"It saves time and trips to the federal grand jury in Richmond," he said.
"Because the Northern Neck grand jury is more convenient to the people down
there, witnesses are more likely to cooperate. We can sometimes take the
transcripts of the local investigations and make bigger and better cases
out of them."

The recent Northumberland case against Robio Severino is "a perfect example
of how effectively the grand jury can operate," McKenney said.

Undercover agents made their first purchase of cocaine from Severino on
Feb. 8. McKenney obtained indictments from the grand jury Feb. 13. Severino
was arrested Feb. 19 on cocaine, concealed-weapon and immigration charges.

Without the special grand jury, McKenney said, Northumberland police would
not have been able to obtain its indictments against Severino until the
April 22 meeting of the Circuit Court's regular, quarterly grand jury.

McKenney said the Northern Neck suffers from "serious crack-cocaine issues
involving groups that might be called gangs in other places."

With about 200 indictments a year, the grand jury adds a significant number
of cases to local court dockets. "It's almost like adding another county to
the caseload," one court official said.

In 2001, the Circuit Court in Essex heard 222 criminal cases;
Northumberland heard 285.

McKenney said he expects the grand jury to issue 27 indictments today for
alleged drug crimes in Northumberland.

"You get out of the grand jury what you put into it," said Northumberland
Sheriff Wayne Middleton, whose deputies work closely with the prosecutor there.

"Mike's available day and night. He doesn't mind the midnight call. He
doesn't act like it's a chore to answer a question."

Middleton and his deputies "couldn't be better partners," said McKenney.
"We talk to each other several times a day and work together and depend on
each other. And it can be the most rewarding thing. You really can get a
sense of satisfaction that you're making this county a better place."

That sense of cooperation and satisfaction seems to have eluded Emery and
Sydnor.

Emery said he has tried several times to find a mediator to help resolve
his problems with Sydnor. Both face re-election next year.

Most recently, Sydnor and Emery said they agreed to ask Warsaw lawyer
Gordon A. Wilkins to try to help them talk through their longstanding
differences. Wilkins is a member of Sydnor's church, a former law partner
of Emery and a substitute judge.

But Sweet filed her assault charge last week just before Wilkins' first
mediation session with Emery and Sydnor.

"And there went that," Sydnor said.