Policeman Testifies Seeing No Drugs on Barry Visit

A third member of Mayor Marion Barry’s police protection unit testified at Barry’s cocaine and perjury trial Friday that he saw no drugs on a trip to the Virgin Islands.

Detective Ulysses Walltower, a 20-year police veteran, said he saw no cocaine or other drugs used on a trip with Barry to St. Thomas in March, 1988.

Barry had gone there in connection with a personnel project that his city had with the U.S. Virgin Islands.

On Thursday, Barry’s defense team called two other members of the Barry protective detail who said they saw no cocaine or other drugs used by Barry on that four-day trip.

But as the other policemen testified, Walltower also said he was not in Barry’s company every moment of the trip in a hotel or during a boat ride.

A convicted drug dealer, Charles Lewis, testified at Barry’s trial they used drugs in the Virgin Islands and four women also gave testimony to seeing drugs there.

But Walltower said he saw Barry in the company of no women other than a city employee who went on the trip.

Barry, 54, is on trial on 10 charges of cocaine possession, one charge of conspiracy with others to get or buy cocaine and three charges of perjury for allegedly lying to a grand jury about Lewis’ alleged connections to drugs.

The maximum penalty for conviction on all counts is 26 years in prison and a $1,850,000 fine--a penalty unlikely to be imposed on any first-time convicted drug offender.

In office for 12 years, Barry announced recently he would not seek a fourth four-year term.

Walltower was the fourth defense witness among an estimated 14 that Barry’s chief lawyer, Kenneth Mundy, said would be called before concluding the defense case.

Prosecutors ended their case Wednesday after calling 25 witnesses, 10 of whom said they saw Barry use cocaine scores of times between 1983 and Jan 18, 1990--the day Barry was arrested by FBI agents in an elaborate hotel sting after videotaping him allegedly smoking addictive crack cocaine.

As he has done every day of the seven-week trial, Barry sat at the defense table intently following each witness.

His wife was in the first row of spectators looking on without expression.