Pubdate: Fri, 17 Aug 2007 Source: Charlotte Observer (NC) Copyright: 2007 The Charlotte Observer Contact: http://www.charlotte.com/mld/observer/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/78 Author: Mandy Locke, (Raleigh) News & Observer Please: see http://www.november.org/thewall/cases/groves-a/groves-a.html Alva Mae Groves to Be Buried Today FREEDOM, THE HARD WAY, FOR 'GRANNY' She Lived to 86 Behind Bars After Conviction in Drug-Dealing Conspiracy CLAYTON -- Thirteen years after Alva Mae "Granny" Groves was locked up for conspiring to trade crack cocaine for food stamps, she's finally home. It took death to free her. Federal prosecutors wanted the ailing great-grandmother behind bars for at least another decade as punishment for her role in the family scheme. Groves will be buried today in Johnston County. She died at a federal prison hospital in Texas last week at age 86. "It's a relief she's dead but it's a hurt. A real hurt we weren't with her," said her daughter Everline Johnson of Red Springs. "What could she have hurt?" In a brief letter mailed to Groves on her deathbed, prison officials said her crime was too grave to allow her to be turned loose. Groves tended her garden the day investigators stormed her double-wide and hauled her to jail. Within a year, Groves, 74 at the time, was sentenced to federal prison for 24 years after pleading guilty to conspiracy to possess with intent to sell and distribute cocaine and aiding and abetting the trading of crack cocaine for food stamps. Her family says prosecutors came down hard on her mostly because she wouldn't help build a case that could lock up her children for life. "My real crime ... was refusing to testify against my sons, children of my womb, that were conceived, birthed and raised with love," Groves wrote in a 2001 letter to November Coalition, which rallies support to those sentenced to prison for long stretches on drug offenses. Groves became the face of a movement to lighten prison sentences for nonviolent crack dealers. As crack cocaine hit the nation's urban streets in the mid-1980s, Congress enacted tough penalties for dealers. Lengthy mandatory minimum sentences enacted then are still in effect today. It's not clear how much Groves knew about the crack cocaine being traded in her home. Groves' daughters swear she had no part in the scheme but didn't force her kin to do business elsewhere. Buddy Berube, lead investigator for the Johnston County Sheriff's Office, insists Groves took part in the trade. "She was a player, for sure," Berube said. "Not as big as her son, but when he wasn't around, she would take care of things." All told, five members of the Groves family were shipped off to federal prison. Her son, Ricky Groves, is pulling a life sentence in Butner. Three generations of Groves women landed at Tallahassee Federal Women's Prison in 1996. Groves' oldest daughter, Margaret Woodard, and Woodard's daughter, Pam Battle, were also convicted in the crackdown. Groves was a sight in prison, said Garry Jones, a retired correctional officer who knew her in Tallahassee. The oldest inmate by at least a decade, Groves would sit beneath a tree in the prison yard, unleashing stern warnings to younger inmates who flirted with correctional officers and wore tight pants. She once came down on Jones, then a lieutenant at the prison. "She told me that she'd spank me herself if I didn't do anything about these 'fast-tailed girls' having sex with the officers," Jones said. "She told me 'I'm too old to be listening to all this moaning and groaning. You better straighten this out.'" Eventually, the officers were caught and fired, Jones said. - --- MAP posted-by: Richard Lake