Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, June 29, 1990 TAG: 9006290823
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A/1 EDITION: EVENING
SOURCE: JAMES ROWLEY ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
The tape, played Thursday for jurors at the mayor's drug and perjury trial in U.S. District Court, shows Barry taking a makeshift pipe, putting it to his mouth and inhaling the smoke of burning crack cocaine.
Barry takes a second "hit" on the pipe and puts on his suit jacket before FBI agents and police storm into the downtown hotel room to arrest him.
Kenneth Mundy, Barry's chief defense lawyer, has argued that the mayor was an inexperienced drug user who was lured to the hotel room by a former girlfriend, Rasheeda Moore.
The former model testified that Barry was reluctant to come up to her room at the Vista International Hotel. In a recorded telephone call, the mayor said "there are too many nosy rosies around."
This and other comments by the mayor before he smokes the crack will undoubtedly be cited by Mundy to try to convince jurors that Barry was pressured into doing something he didn't want to do.
The videotaped conversation between Barry and Moore gives Mundy some basis for this argument.
But it also contains statements from Barry that prosecutors can cite to argue that the mayor was an experienced drug user who willingly purchased and smoked the illegal drug.
For instance, Barry alludes to prior drug use, saying at one point, "I don't smoke no more, honey." At another point, he tells her: "Go get some. Go get it."
At another, the mayor asks Moore if she has a pipe to smoke the crack.
The mayor voices reluctance to smoke the cocaine unless Moore joined in. But Moore spurns his repeated requests, saying "it makes me too hyper, I get really hyper."
"If you don't do it, I'm not going to do it," the mayor says.
Richard Ben-Veniste, a Washington defense attorney, said Mundy can "highlight the means under which the recorded portion of the evidence was set up."
"You can point to the fact that the government brought the witness here, to be used as a decoy, paid for her bills at the beauty parlor, babysat her children" to help the FBI catch the mayor, he said.
"In this case, I think there is substantial ammunition if you are dealing only with that incident," Ben-Veniste said.
But the law of entrapment requires the defendant to show that he would not have performed the illegal act unless pressured by the police.
Moore has testified that she and the mayor used cocaine more than 100 times on previous occasions. Convicted drug dealer Charles Lewis recounted a series of episodes of cocaine use with Barry.
"The amount of information that has been brought forward is staggering in terms of the extent of drug use that is now alleged by witnesses under oath," Ben-Veniste said.
"It certainly helps them [prosecutors] rebut any argument of entrapment on the basis of disposition," he said.
Joseph diGenova, a former U.S. attorney who investigated Barry for many years without bringing any charges, said the tape doesn't help the entrapment argument.
"He gave her money for the drugs, he waited for the drugs, he never said during the entire time, `I don't do drugs' or `take those away,' " diGenova said.
"She didn't force it on him," the former prosecutor said. "He goes over and picks up the pipe and lights it himself."
Even though Barry tried in vain to persuade Moore to take the pipe first, "he didn't walk out, he didn't say `I won't use it,' " diGenova said.
"She decided not to, so he went first."
"It's very interesting, he never puts his coat on to leave until he takes the second hit of the cocaine," diGenova said. "Then he puts the coat [on]. . . . That's the image that the jury is going to remember."
by CNB