Published: August 27, 2009 10:57 am      

Cobb gets 25 years in sex for drugs trial

By Carl Keith Greene/Staff Writer

Roy Lacy Cobb, 56, of Keavy, was sentenced to 25 years in prison after being tried on charges that he exchanged oxycontin for sexual favors.

U.S. District Judge Gregory F. Van Tatenhove imposed the sentence in federal court in London Wednesday.

The sentencing came following a February trial in which he was found guilty on 10 counts.

Eight of the counts involved providing drugs for persons over 21 years of age and the other two involved providing drugs to persons under 21 years old.

Van Tatenhove ordered incarceration of 20 years on the counts involving those over 21 and 25 years on the counts involving those under 21. The two sentences will run concurrently. Cobb will be required to be under supervised release for six years when his sentence is served.

The sentencing process lasted more than two hours with several objections to points in the pre-sentencing report.

It all began with Cobb asking for a new attorney, rather than the one provided by the court.

After a discussion at the bench among Van Tatenhove, Cobb and his lawyer, lasting about 15 minutes, Cobb agreed to keep his lawyer Derek Gordon.

Van Tatenhove told Cobb that he has the right to a lawyer appointed by the court, “but not the lawyer of your choice.”

He told Cobb that sentencing is not the time to bring up issues seeking a new lawyer. “You have full appeal rights as to the work of your lawyer,” he added.

As Cobb spoke again to the judge, he said the jury wasn’t properly informed as to the number of oxycontin tablets he had for the women to whom he distributed them.

Van Tatenhove stopped Cobb and told him it was the judge’s job to “determine appropriate application of the law. That’s what I do! You may appeal after I decide and impose sentence.”

Prior to imposing the sentence, Van Tatenhove allowed Cobb’s daughter, Christina, to speak to the court.

Under oath, she said she had been threatened if she testified for her father. She admitted that she had been addicted to drugs and was on her 67th day of being clean. Christina said that “all the girls,” to whom her father distributed oxycodone were friends of hers.

“I beg you to give him some leniency. He’s why I’m clean today. He is my rock. I feel that I let my father down.”

Another daughter, Mary, had testified against Cobb at trial but was not present at the sentencing.

“This is one of the heartbreaking moments, when your daughter testifies against you,” Cobb said just before his sentence was imposed.

Mary, who was charged in the armed robbery with another person of the Rite-Aid pharmacy in Carnaby Square, admitted in a June 13, 2008 interview about her role in the robbery, that she had been using oxycodone for about nine months.

She said she had gotten the drugs from her father.

She added that her father got his oxycodone from a physician in Tennessee and gave the tablets to women in Laurel County in return for sexual favors.

A week after that, two women interviewed by Laurel sheriff’s deputies revealed that he had exchanged oxycodone for sexual activity with them.