Photos by Josh Meltzer | The Roanoke Times

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

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Trial began yesterday

• 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

Was Robert Keith Adams a model officer, the "best of the best of the Henry County deputies," as his attorney, Terry Grimes, described him in federal court Tuesday?

Or was he part of the "law enforcement nightmare" that Assistant U.S. Attorney Tom Bondurant depicted -- part of a group of crooked officers who excused one another's misdeeds and lined up to sell drugs, steal evidence and accept bribes?

The competing descriptions are the central question of the sole jury trial to emerge from the high-profile public corruption indictments that engulfed the Henry County Sheriff's Office last year.

Adams, 43, faces six charges tied to accusations he aided and concealed cocaine dealing, encouraged a witness to lie to investigators and lied to investigators himself. His trial is scheduled to run through Thursday and could involve dozens of witnesses.

Of his 19 fellow defendants -- who include former Sheriff Frank Cassell and 11 other former members of the sheriff's office -- 17 pleaded guilty to an array of charges such as firearm violations and drug dealing. Two more will have their charges dropped if they stay out of trouble for a year.

Adams alone has maintained his innocence. The burly, shaven-headed sheriff's office veteran, who at various times was a patrol deputy, a sergeant in charge of investigations and a school resource officer, had about a dozen relatives and friends sitting behind him as the prosecution began its case.

On the stand Tuesday, and scheduled for cross-examination today, was Adams' one-time colleague James Vaught, a former Henry County sergeant and a central figure in the case. Vaught, who has pleaded guilty to racketeering, became an informant early in the investigation of the sheriff's office and recorded about 100 conversations that led to most of last year's indictments.

In a mix of static-filled recordings and direct testimony, Vaught told how in 2001 he seized a kilogram and a half of cocaine during an improper search at a motel near Ridgeway, then sold it. But a man named Red Thomas saw him and told Adams, who for the next few years repeatedly asked Vaught for $20,000 -- half the cash the tipster said Vaught stole with the drugs. Grimes said Vaught knew Adams was only joking.

Bondurant said Adams never told supervisors at the sheriff's office about Vaught.

Grimes, however, said Adams told a dispatcher and two other deputies that he had heard an officer was involved in stealing drugs. When FBI investigator Stan Slater, who was testifying about his interviews with Adams, noted that neither deputy that Grimes mentioned was a supervisor, Grimes responded, "Rank, schmank," and said one of the men was acting as coordinator for the school resource officers.

In his opening statement, Grimes told jurors they would have to choose between believing Adams or defendants who had already pleaded guilty and were trying to lessen their sentences by testifying.

Slater said that when he and Virginia State Police investigator Mark Austin talked to Adams, he admitted knowing Vaught took drugs from the motel. Prosecutors played a recording of the interview, with Slater asking repeatedly why Adams did not arrest Vaught as soon as he learned about his actions. After long moments of silence, Adams said he was "just thinking about him and his family."

Asked if he had excused other crimes committed by officers, Adams said on the tape that he had not, except maybe for speeding.

Asked if he knew of other crimes committed by officers, Adams said on the tape that he did not, except for affairs some officers might be having.

Absent Tuesday was any mention of Calvin Rayfield Moore, who prosecutors say was a drug dealer who paid Adams for information about police activities. Moore died in a car crash just after the Henry County indictments became public last year, and Adams' attorneys have sought to bar witnesses' accounts of Moore's statements that he was bribing police.

U.S. District Court Judge James Turk said he wants jurors to be able to make up their minds about the accounts, but held off ruling on a defense motion to limit testimony about Moore.

New details of the Henry County case that emerged Tuesday included:

n Vaught said that he, former Sgt. David Allan King, who has pleaded guilty to racketeering and conspiring to distribute ketamine and steroids, and another officer broke into a house and stole money from a man connected to a gambling operation.

n Vaught said he and King had begun selling drugs they seized during searches before the 2001 incident at the motel.

n Vaught said he, other officers and William Randall Reed, a local drug dealer who pleaded guilty to racketeering in the Henry County corruption case, used his rental house -- one of two dozen he owned with partners -- for affairs. Vaught said he left a key out for officers to use.

n Vaught said one of his affairs was with Ginger Renee Lewis, who later pleaded guilty to possessing ketamine with intent to distribute it. Vaught said he stole money from Lewis' employer, a local doctor, but repaid it.

n Federal agents planning to arrest Reed on suspicion of receiving a shipment of ketamine at a rental house in Martinsville were surprised when a uniformed Henry County officer came to the house, met a woman, then left before Reed arrived. The officer turned out to be Vaught, who owned the house. The March 2005 arrest of Reed, and his statements that he helped Vaught sell drugs, triggered a wider investigation of the sheriff's office.

n In a January 2006 conversation with Adams that he recorded, Vaught said he still had a half-kilogram of cocaine and wanted to locate Wilbert Herman Brown -- who would later plead guilty to racketeering and lying to investigators -- so he could sell it. Adams drew him a map to Brown's house, and Vaught said he did not want the sheriff's office watching when he visited.

"Now listen," Vaught said on the recording, "if I go over to Wilbert's house, don't be having no green van sitting over there waiting for me."

Adams' answer: "Have I ever done anything to you?"