Tight-lipped 'Granny' dies in prison

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 among generations of kin in Johnston County. She died last week at a federal prison hospital in Texas after being refused the privilege of dying at home under the watch of her children. She was 86.

"It's a relief she's dead, but it's a hurt, a real hurt we weren't with her," said daughter Everline Johnson of Red Springs. "What could she have hurt?"

Prison officials wouldn't comment on Groves' case, citing privacy concerns. In a brief letter that was mailed to Groves on her death bed, prison officials advised her that her crime was too grave to allow her to be turned loose.

Groves was tending her garden the day investigators stormed her double-wide mobile home and hauled her to jail. Within a year, she 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. She was 74.

'My real crime'

Groves' family says prosecutors came down hard on her mostly because she wouldn't help investigators build a case that could have locked 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, a non-profit organization rallying support to free her and others sentenced to prison for long stretches on drug offenses.

Groves, who was caught up in the nation's aggressive war on crack cocaine in the 1980s and '90s, became the face of a movement to lighten prison sentences for non-violent crack dealers.

As the drug hit urban streets in the mid-1980s, Congress enacted tough penalties for dealers. Long mandatory minimum sentences are still in effect, although several bills pending in Congress could lighten those prison terms.

It isn't clear how much Groves knew about the crack cocaine being traded in her home. Her daughters swear she had no part in the scheme but didn't force her kin to do business elsewhere.

'She was a player'

Buddy Berube, the 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 family members were sent to federal prison. Her son, Ricky Groves is pulling a life sentence in Butner.

Three generations of Groves women landed at Tallahassee (Fla.) Federal Women's Prison in 1996. Groves' oldest daughter, Margaret Woodard, and Woodard's daughter, Pam Battle, also were convicted after the bust.

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, issuing 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.'"