Barry Witness Raises Questions About Alleged Cocaine Delivery

Marion Barry’s lawyers Monday attacked the credibility of an admitted cocaine dealer who said she delivered crack to the mayor at a municipal office in 1988.

Barry’s lawyers said at his cocaine and perjury trial that the mayor has an alibi for the time of the alleged delivery on Sept. 7, 1988. Prosecutors contend Barry’s alibi is non-existent.

Testifying for the defense, city employee Clifton Roberson said he accepted a job application from Lydia Pearson on Sept. 7, 1988.

Pearson testified earlier in Barry’s trial that she handed the mayor “crack cocaine. . . . He gave me the money for it. . . . I gave him” the job application.

Roberson, who works for mayoral aide Anita Bonds, said Pearson came to the office on Sept. 7, 1988, and was annoyed that neither Barry nor Bonds was there. Roberson said he accepted the job application from Pearson, who then left.

Earlier, defense lawyer R. Kenneth Mundy suggested that the mayor has an alibi for the time the government alleges Pearson was bringing him crack cocaine.

A former city aide and the city fire chief testified that the mayor was addressing problems involving ambulance service in the District of Columbia on the morning of Sept. 7, 1988.

Barry was in the scheduled 10 a.m. meeting until nearly noon that day, Joseph Yeldell, former director of the office of emergency preparedness, said under questioning from Mundy.

But Barry was late to the meeting, Yeldell said.