JAILED DEPUTIES CITED IN APPEAL

LEXINGTON -- A convicted Lexington drug dealer has asked for a new trial
because three of the deputies who arrested him are now facing drug charges
of their own.

Prosecutors already have dropped more than two dozen pending cases
following the arrest of Davidson vice/narcotics deputies David Woodall,
William Monroe Rankin and Douglas Edward Westmoreland. This is the first
conviction being sought to be overturned and could be followed by others.

George Branham Jr., 18, was sentenced to 14 years in prison last year after
a jury convicted him of possession and trafficking of LSD.

According to court documents filed by Branham's attorney, Georgia Nixon,
the jailed deputies were witnesses against Branham during his trial.
Woodall, Rankin and Westmoreland, along with three other men, were arrested
in December and charged with distributing 220 pounds of marijuana, 11
pounds of cocaine, anabolic steroids and Ecstasy last year.

Nixon said her client deserves a new trial because he was convicted largely
on the credibility of the three officers who are now facing charges.

"Had (jurors) known the officers were themselves drug dealers ... they
probably would not have believed them," Nixon said.

Other inmates also are asking that their cases be reviewed in light of the
charges against the deputies, said Davidson County prosecutor Garry Frank,
and some are not waiting for their attorneys to do the paperwork. Frank has
received at least three letters from convicted offenders asking him to look
at their cases and the involvement of the deputies in them.

Frank said he will look at those cases to see if they deserve to go before
a judge.

"Our obligation under the law is to seek justice," he said.

In Branham's case, the decision will be made by the Court of Appeals
because he already has made two previous allegations about his case. As a
16-year-old minor at the time of his arrest, Branham had a right to have
his mother present during questioning, but the officers would not allow him
to see her, according to court documents. Also, Branham alleges that he was
entrapped by an informer who admitted on the witness stand that he held a
grudge against Branham because he believed Branham was somehow responsible
for his sister's drug use.

Ron Wright, a criminal proceedings expert at Wake Forest University Law
School, doesn't expect many more inmates to seek to have their cases
overturned, for several reasons.

It's generally easier to get a prosecutor to drop pending cases than for a
judge to overturn a conviction, Wright said. For the case to be retried, a
judge would have to review the file to see if there was enough evidence
without the officers' testimony to get a conviction.

"You're talking to a different decision-maker with a different standard,"
Wright said.

Also, many of the inmates have already served their time. Some may want to
have their records expunged so the case won't be used against them if they
have to go before a judge again, but most of them won't have that kind of
foresight, or at least won't believe they'll get caught again, Wright said.

Some inmates who believe they were wrongly imprisoned based on the
officers' testimony may be tempted to sue, but built-in immunities
protecting the sheriff's department and prosecutor's office make those
suits a long shot and it's unlikely that any attorney would be willing to
take them on, Wright said.

High Point prosecutor Randy Carroll hasn't heard from any attorneys who
plan to challenge the outcomes of their cases based on involvement from
jailed officers. Archdale police Sgt. Christopher James Shetley also was
arrested in the case, and he is the only one who Carroll recalls having as
a witness. Shetley was sometimes involved in cases where offenses occurred
both in Archdale and High Point.

But Shetley's involvement in those cases usually has been minimal, Carroll
said, and probably wouldn't be enough to get a case overturned.

Sometimes High Point police use officers from other agencies to make
undercover drug buys, hoping that officers from outside the area will be
less known to the city's drug dealers. But Carroll said he doesn't recall
any cases in which the outcome of the case depended on testimony from the
jailed officers, so he's not expecting to have to retry many cases.

"I don't see the floodgates opening in High Point," he said.