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Photos by Josh Meltzer | The Roanoke Times

Robert Keith Adams (right) walks into court Tuesday morning.

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Trial starts today

• Former Sgt. Robert Keith Adams, accused of assisting and concealing cocaine distribution, encouraging a witness to make false statements and making false statements himself.

Sentenced

• Former Sheriff Frank Cassell, making a false statement to investigators: eight months in prison, $15,000 fine
• Former Sgt. Patrick David Martin, possessing stolen firearms: three months
• Former Deputy Bradley Scott Martin, racketeering and conspiring to distribute ketamine and steroids: 33 months, $5,000
• Former Deputy Steven Varion Preston, conspiring to distribute ketamine and steroids: 30 days
• Former Deputy Walter R. Hairston, racketeering: 30 months
• Former Deputy Cornelia Bryant Cox, making a false statement: two years' probation
• Former postal worker Kandy D. Hubbard Deshazo, making a false statement: two years' probation
• Former state probation officer Carlton Arnez Riley, attempted possession of cocaine with intent to distribute it: 57 months. Riley has appealed his sentence.
• Ronald Dean Trantham, racketeering and making a false statement: 30 months
• Ginger Renee Lewis, possessing ketamine with intent to distribute it: two years' probation

Awaiting sentencing

• Former Sgt. James Alden Vaught, a central figure in the scandal who taped conversations with other defendants and who pleaded guilty to racketeering
• Former vice officer and school resource officer David Allan King, racketeering and conspiring to distribute ketamine and steroids
• Former Maj. James Harold Keaton, possessing a stolen firearm
• Former vice officer Travis Todd Wilkins, possessing a firearm with an obliterated serial number
• Wilbert Herman Brown, racketeering and making a false statement
• William Randall Reed, racketeering. Reed also will be sentenced for his involvement in selling ketamine as part of a massive online pharmacy case prosecuted in federal court in Philadelphia. The Philadelphia case triggered the Henry County arrests.
• Mark Anthony Roberson, possessing a firearm with an obliterated serial number. This is the same gun that Wilkins, Burton and Jonathan Roberson are charged with possessing. Mark Roberson's case was continued — or essentially frozen — during his sentencing hearing, and prosecutors said they were reconsidering it.

Charges to be dropped after a year's good behavior

• Former Deputy Jason Allen Burton, possessing a rifle with a barrel less than 16 inches long that had been modified to automatic fire capability and had an obliterated serial number
• Former Deputy Jonathan K. Roberson (nephew of Mark Roberson), possessing a firearm with an obliterated serial number

Of the 20 people indicted last year in the Henry County Sheriff's Office corruption scandal, only one opted for a jury trial.

This morning, Robert Keith Adams begins what is scheduled to be a three-day test of his innocence or guilt. With nearly four dozen possible witnesses subpoenaed, the trial in federal court in Roanoke seems likely to offer the most detailed public account yet of the drug dealing that is the core of the Henry County case.

Adams, a former sergeant in the sheriff's office, is accused of assisting and concealing cocaine distribution, encouraging a witness to make false statements to investigators and making false statements himself. He faces six charges in all.

Prosecutors say that the late Calvin Rayfield Moore, a man Assistant U.S. Attorney Tom Bondurant described Monday as "the largest drug dealer in Henry County," paid Adams for information about police activities.

Adams, who was a school resource officer and the head of investigations, has pleaded not guilty to the charges.

All of the other Henry County defendants have either pleaded guilty or entered pretrial diversion agreements that will drop their charges if they stay out of trouble for a year. Some of the already-convicted defendants, including former Sheriff Frank Cassell, have been named as possible witnesses in Adams' trial.

Sentencing for some of the scandal's key figures, such as former Sgt. James Vaught, was delayed until after Adams' trial with the understanding that their testimony could affect the severity of their penalties.

Adams is accused of knowing about a 2001 search in which Vaught took 2 kilograms of cocaine and $40,000, then sold the drugs and kept the money. Prosecutors say that instead of turning Vaught in, Adams asked him for $20,000. Vaught did not give it to him, prosecutors said.

At a pretrial hearing Monday, defense attorneys Terry Grimes and Melvin Williams continued their year-long effort to limit the evidence that could be used against Adams. Because Moore died in a car crash the day after the Henry County indictments became public, anything Moore said to others about Adams' role in the case should be barred as "rankest hearsay," Grimes argued.

"I can't cross-examine Rayfield Moore. ... I can't test the trustworthiness of those statements," Grimes said.

Bondurant agreed that evidentiary rules usually bar hearsay, but noted that exceptions are permitted. He said at least three witnesses could testify that Moore told them about bribing officers.

"We need Rayfield Moore to explain why he was paying him [Adams] the money," Bondurant said.

U.S District Court Judge James Turk, who is hearing all the Henry County cases, said he would announce this morning whether to allow jurors to hear second-hand accounts of Moore's words.

The Henry County case was triggered by the arrest of William Randall Reed, who was selling ketamine and other drugs he received in the mail. Reed accepted some drug deliveries at a house owned by Vaught, and Reed told authorities that he and Vaught were partners in drug dealing. A federal investigation led to a wide-ranging set of charges involving firearms and evidence handling as well as drugs.