DEA Sting Takes Place on Barry Jury’s Doorstep : Drugs: The jurors were said to be ‘oblivious’ to the police action at their hotel. The mayor’s lawyer may ask for a mistrial.

Jurors in Mayor Marion Barry’s drug and perjury trial spent their first full day of deliberations Friday in the relative calm of the U.S. Courthouse after a drug sting at their hotel the night before.

Like a scene from a movie, there were helicopters, search dogs and an escape car ramming police cruisers.

The presiding judge in the Barry case said he had been assured by U.S. marshals that “our jurors were oblivious” to the sting, but the mayor’s lawyer said he might ask for a mistrial because of the operation.

The Barry jury has been secretly staying at the hotel in suburban Maryland for the last 6 1/2 weeks. But reporters covering the drug sting story and its aftermath discovered that the jury was there, raising the possibility that it would have to be moved.

The jurors, meanwhile, said they would deliberate today in an effort to move toward a verdict as quickly as possible. They began deliberations late Thursday.

Barry is charged with 10 misdemeanor cocaine possession counts, including one in connection with a hotel sting in which the FBI videotaped him smoking from a crack cocaine pipe. He also faces three perjury charges and a misdemeanor conspiracy charge.

The mayor shrugged off questions about the trial Friday, saying only: “I feel fantastic.”

He spoke to about 200 teen-agers at a youth forum, then returned to his District Building office for a meeting with top staff members and Cabinet officials. It was the first time that Barry had visited City Hall without having to rush back to the federal courthouse since jury selection in his trial began on June 4.

Thursday night’s unconnected drug sting was aimed at Brian Tribble, a former friend of the late University of Maryland basketball star Len Bias, authorities said. Bias died in June, 1986, of cocaine poisoning.

Peter Gruden, special agent in charge of the federal Drug Enforcement Administration’s Washington field office, said he was “pretty sure that it was not known” by the DEA that the Barry jury was sequestered at the hotel.

Tribble was lured to the hotel to purchase cocaine, but, as authorities moved in, he fled, officials said. An associate was taken into custody and faced arraignment on drug possession charges.

Tribble drove off, rammed two police vehicles blocking his escape, drove back to the hotel and fled into a wooded area, said Prince George’s County police officers who assisted the DEA.

During the day Friday, the Barry jury asked for complete sets of the 32-page instruction booklet read to it Thursday by U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson. Jurors asked also to see a huge magnetic calendar in the courtroom on which the prosecution listed the times Barry was accused of using drugs.

Jackson said he would allow the jury to return piecemeal portions of the verdict, rather than waiting until it reached a conclusion on all 14 charges.