When it comes to drug smuggling in Thailand, there are no such things as mitigating factors. By law, anyone caught trafficking in narcotics is subject to the death penalty, although, as published reports indicated at the time, no Westerner had ever been sentenced to die in Thailand for drugs. At the time of Roye's arrest, no one had been executed on narcotics charges for more than two decades. Most faced sentences of 50 years in prison. That's a virtual life sentence anywhere, but particularly in dank and crowded Thai prisons, places where the only water comes from the sewage- strewn rivers, and where tuberculosis and AIDS are as common as the giant roaches that scuttle across the floor, according to an account published in The Jerusalem Report.

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To those who knew Roye -- his family, his friends, even his ex-wife -- the thought that he might actually be a drug smuggler was inconceivable. As Stephanie Roye put it in a 1995 interview with the Record, "The fact is he would not put himself in that kind of danger. He's a crusader, he's an idealist; he's not a drug smuggler."

To help boost his case, Roye's supporters brought in a powerful ally, George Terwilliger, the former No. 2 man in the Justice Department under George H. W. Bush's attorney general, Richard Thornburgh. In Thailand, they retained the services of lawyer Kittiporn Aroonrat.

In the U.S, Terwilliger worked his sources and worked his heart out. He tried to persuade his former colleagues in the Justice Department to extradite Roye to testify against the accused drug courier who had been arrested, in part because of Roye's statements to Thai authorities, at JFK International Airport. The U.S. government refused. Nor could the State Department be persuaded to argue on Roye's behalf with the Thai government. Without such support, it was unlikely that Roye might win a royal pardon, the only guaranteed get-out-of-jail free card in Thailand.

The Thai government, meanwhile, had little patience for Roye's claims that he was simply a journalist who was trying to get the big story, to pierce the veil of intrigue surrounding the international drug trade. Nor did they seem moved when he wove an elaborate tale alleging that a mysterious international drug lord had pressured him into carrying the drugs, threatening, he said, to kill both Roye's elderly mother and his young son if he didn't comply.

It's far from clear that the court believed him. Even if it did, it wouldn't have mattered. In Thailand, as in much of the rest of the world, the courts don't care why you're carrying drugs. If you've got them, you're guilty. And Steve Roye had them.

In hindsight, it is arguable that the Thai and U.S. governments might have been more willing to help Roye if he hadn't experienced what family members believe may have been another breakdown, a breakdown which led him to make wild and unsubstantiated charges against both governments.

Not long after his arrest, Roye arranged to have a visitor slip a videotape out of Thailand, a videotape on which Roye "weaves an elaborate yarn of fictional meetings in remote areas of international airports with shadowy figures," Moorman told the Record. Roye also alleged on the tape, which he wanted released to various U.S. media outlets, that U.S, government and Thai officials had secretly conspired against him.

With no support from the U.S. government and little sympathy for Roye in Thailand, Aroonrat had few options for Roye's defense. In the end, he persuaded Roye to plead guilty and to throw himself on the mercy of the courts. He hoped the court would be lenient, and by Thai standards, it was. Stephen Roye was sentenced to life in prison.

"I'm totally outraged," Roye said in reports published at the time. "I'm in total disbelief. A life sentence for what? Even if I had done it, I didn't deserve life. You should give a life sentence to killers."

"I was totally gone when they read the sentence," he said. "I expected I might get 25, 30, or even 35 years, but I never expected a life sentence."