Local & State Headlines

Former ASU employee sentenced in drug case

• Court officials say that a former ASU employee was using her job as a front for drug dealing.

J.D. Sumner

ALBANY — A federal court judge has sentenced several area drug dealers, including a former Albany State employee and students agents say were selling drugs on campus, to federal prison, court officials said.

Debra Berry, 45, of Albany, Montcreif Hart, 25, of Lilburn, and Christopher Henderson, 20, of Hampton were sentenced by U.S. District Court Judge Louis Sands Monday, a spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.

According to Sue McKinney, the spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office, in a plea agreement reached with Berry, she confessed to using her job at the ASU’s Student Union as a front to sell marijuana, ecstacy and crack cocaine to students. She was sentenced to serve 30 months in a federal prison.

Hart and Henderson both acknowledged helping Berry to sell the drugs to undercover drug agents either inside the student union or elsewhere on campus, McKinney said.

Hart was sentenced to 6 months in prison, while Henderson will have to serve a full year, McKinney said.

In an unrelated case, Jack Carlton Williams, III, of Albany, and Jarvis Nichols of Montezuma, where both sentenced after pleading guilty to distributing drugs.

Williams, who also pleaded guilty to possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, was sentenced to serve 162 months, or 13 and a half years, in a federal prison with three years on supervised release.

Nichols was ordered to serve 288 months, or 24 years, in federal custody with five years on supervised release.

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