Robert Keith Adams gambled on a jury trial, then gambled again by taking the stand in his own defense.

And it was another gamble, Adams' penchant for buying lottery tickets, that dominated his testimony Thursday in federal court.

The sole defendant in the Henry County Sheriff's Office public corruption case to take his charges to a jury, the former sergeant's task was to explain how he was caught on tape seeming to excuse, or even assist, another officer's drug dealing. Adams said he just hadn't really followed what was being said.

"I was listening, but I was also scratching lottery tickets," Adams said, "so I wasn't really paying close attention."

Adams is the only one among 20 Henry County defendants not to accept a plea bargain or pretrial diversion agreement. His trial began Tuesday, and closing arguments are scheduled for today.

The 43-year-old Martinsville resident is accused of assisting and concealing cocaine dealing by not reporting that he had heard that former Sgt. James Vaught took cocaine during an improper search in 2001 and sold it.

Vaught, who became a government informant before he taped a conversation with Adams in January 2006, also described then how he accepted drugs and money from a drug dealer who used a house he owned, how he lied to federal officials and how he wanted to sell a half-kilogram of cocaine to a dealer named Wilbert Herman Brown.

Adams drew Vaught a map to Brown's house.

Brown has pleaded guilty to racketeering and making a false statement to investigators in the Henry County case. Vaught has pleaded guilty to racketeering. Neither man has been sentenced.

On the stand Thursday, Adams said that while he was distracted from what Vaught was saying back in 2006, he also was trying to get him to say more.

"I was just trying to act like I was going along with him," Adams said of his apparent helpfulness.

Similarly, Adams testified that for years after hearing a tip that police were involved in stealing drugs at a motel, he teased Vaught to try to pry out more information. For instance, Adams said he told Vaught a tipster identified Vaught from a sheriff's office calendar picture just to see what Vaught's reaction would be. "My way of interrogating somebody," Adams said.

Adams' attraction to the lottery -- he said he bought tickets every day -- showed up elsewhere in Thursday's evidence.

He is accused of making two false statements to investigators: one that he did not know why Vaught was looking for Brown; and the other that he was not accepting payments from a notorious drug dealer named Calvin Rayfield Moore.

Moore died in a single-vehicle car crash just after the Henry County indictments were announced last year. His girlfriend of 17 years, Winona Dudley, testified earlier in the trial that she saw Adams take money from Moore. She said Moore told her he was buying information about police activities.

On Thursday, Adams' wife, Karen Adams, testified that on the night when Dudley said her husband met Moore in a motel room, he was actually at home supervising a sleepover birthday party for one of their children.

And Robert Adams testified that he did not take payments from Moore and had not met with him.

But on cross-examination, Assistant U.S. Attorney Tom Bondurant produced 23 lottery tickets that Adams had purchased that day and kept for possible tax purposes. The time on the tickets showed Adams was at a store playing the lottery after 10 p.m., not at home at a birthday party. Adams insisted he had only taken a quick trip to the store.

Like during the trial's previous days, there was more back and forth Thursday about whether Adams reported his suspicions of Vaught. He said that at various points he told other officers, but not his supervisors. But he said he had forgotten this when he signed a statement in 2006 that he did not report the tip he received in 2001 "to my supervisor or anyone else."

"Knowing what I know now," Adams said, "I would have done a lot of things different."