Witness Says He Used Cocaine With Barry

Mayor Marion Barry of Washington was denounced as a crack-snorting master of “deceit and deception” and called the victim of a federal prosecutor’s “deal with the devil” Tuesday in opening statements in his cocaine and perjury trial.

The rhetorical fervor of the opposing descriptions from a federal prosecutor and Barry’s defense lawyer soon gave way as the prosecution began its case by detailing what it claimed was a long-standing pattern of almost obsessive drug abuse by the embattled mayor.

By day’s end the first major witness, former District of Columbia official Charles Lewis, was well launched on an unusually detailed account of cocaine snorting and crack smoking episodes with Barry in Washington and in the Virgin Islands.

If Lewis’ testimony for the prosecution ends today, defense attorney R. Kenneth Mundy can be expected to subject him to blistering cross-examination. Mundy is expected to attempt to discredit the government’s strategy of basing much of its case on witnesses who will say that they took drugs with Barry and supplied him with cocaine powder and crack.

Assistant U.S. Atty. Richard W. Roberts, a tall, soft-spoken black man in wire spectacles, opened the trial with a tough statement in which he declared that this “is a case about deceit and deception . . . to keep the public, the police and the grand jury from discovering the unfortunate but seamy truth: Marion Barry has been snorting crack and cocaine for years all over D.C.”

Speaking directly to a jury panel of 13 blacks and 5 whites, Roberts added: “He’s been preaching to our community: ‘Down with dope,’ and all the time he’s been putting dope up his nose . . . . This is the other side--the secret side--of Marion Barry.”

In describing a videotape that FBI agents made that allegedly will show Barry smoking crack in a sting operation at a downtown Washington hotel last January, Roberts at one point mimicked what he said was the videotaped image of Barry--drawing deeply on a pipe, holding the smoke, then relighting the drug and drawing again.

Barry, dapper and dark-suited at the defense table, a crimson carnation in his buttonhole, leaned back in his chair and smiled thinly at the pantomime.

Roberts also summarized the evidence, much of it from former addicts, users and suppliers who agreed to help the prosecution after plea-bargaining to settle their own cases. The witnesses, Roberts conceded, “are not all Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts.”

That observation provided the main theme of Barry’s chief defender, Mundy.

“This case is about the deals the government has made with the devil,” Mundy said.

“Seven years ago the government made a determination it was going to ‘get’ Mr. Barry, and go to any lengths . . . and any expense--exorbitant expense--to make a case.”

Mundy denounced the opening star witness, Lewis, and model Rasheeda Moore, who lured Barry to the sting, as tainted by government pressure.

“The government provided the atmosphere and the accommodation, the bait and the booze, the pipe and the drugs, the know-how and Miss Moore,” said Mundy. Moore, he added, “warmed . . . and cajoled” Barry into smoking the crack and even had to show him how to light the pipe.

Lewis, on the other hand, testified that he and Barry had repeatedly used drugs together in the Virgin Islands and smoked crack together in Washington well before the sting involving Moore.

Lewis added under questioning that Barry never was made sick by the cocaine. At one point, Lewis volunteered information about his own preference for crack, saying: “You get a better and more immediate high. Your nose doesn’t feel stuffy. I prefer it (to powder cocaine) to feel good. I feel great, in fact.”

Barry announced last week that he will not run for a fourth term.