
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, April 3, 1990                   TAG: 9004030399
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: A-4   EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY 
SOURCE: By NEAL THOMPSON NEW RIVER
DATELINE:    CHRISTIANSBURG -                                 LENGTH: Medium

HARDIE DRAWS 3 YEARS FOR PROBATION VIOLATION

Blacksburg businessman Thomas D. Hardie was sentenced to three years in prison Monday for violating his Montgomery County probation.

Hardie will be allowed to serve the three years concurrently with an 18-month sentence he received Jan. 31 in U.S. District Court in Roanoke, where a judge convicted him of two counts of aiding and abetting in the distribution of cocaine.

Hardie, 46, was indicted last April on the federal charges and pleaded guilty in September.

Circuit Judge Willis A. Woods of Wytheville had revoked Hardie's county probation in early January, but postponed sentencing until Hardie was sentenced in federal court.

Hardie's latest sentence is a result of his arrest and conviction in September 1986 on a cocaine possession charge, for which he was put on probation for three years.

When Hardie admitted in federal court last fall to being a chauffeur for a Montgomery County drug operation, he violated that probation.

Hardie's new prison sentence became effective Monday after Woods' order to revoke Hardie's three-year probation was received by mail at the Montgomery County Circuit Court clerk's office.

The order, dated March 30, states that Hardie does not have to appear in court to be sentenced and can remain at the correctional center where he is being held.

Douglas Brinckman, Hardie's attorney in Christiansburg, said Monday that because of federal probation restrictions, he could not reveal where Hardie was incarcerated. But court documents show that Hardie was recently transferred from a drug treatment center to a correctional facility in St. Louis.

Hardie actually will end up serving about 2\ years of his three-year sentence. According to Woods' order, Hardie already had served nearly nine months in the Montgomery County Jail and drug treatment centers in Roanoke, Charlottesville and Lexington between May 1988 and January 1990.

Hardie's legal troubles have included charges for drunken driving and assault and a history of treatment for drug and alcohol abuse.

by CNB