Barry Asks Prosecutor to Drop Retrial Option : Drugs: The contrite mayor asks cheering supporters for forgiveness. He also may revive plans for office.

Mayor Marion Barry, brushing aside tears a day after a jury convicted him of a misdemeanor drug charge but failed to resolve 12 other charges, apologized to the city Saturday and called on the federal government to abandon any thoughts of a retrial.

“To young and old, black and white . . . rich and poor, I ask you to forgive me for any hurt I may have caused,” Barry, one of the nation’s most prominent black municipal officials, told cheering supporters at a rally televised live throughout the Washington area.

“Let us come together to heal ourselves and our city,” he said. “I call upon the United States government, too, to join me in this healing.”

The government’s arrest of Barry on drug charges in a highly publicized sting operation has inflamed racial tensions in the predominantly black District of Columbia, where the former civil rights activist is finishing his third term as mayor.

Some legal authorities predicted Saturday that prosecutors would indeed drop the unresolved drug and perjury charges against Barry, largely because a crucial piece of their evidence--the FBI sting operation--apparently proved offensive to many jurors.

Members of the jury who were willing to discuss the case said that in convicting Barry of one misdemeanor drug possession charge and acquitting him on another, they were divided on other charges and were split 6 to 6 on a specific drug charge arising from the FBI sting.

Barry, in a 15-minute speech in a municipal auditorium, made no mention of any future political plans. But the Democratic mayor, who announced when his trial began that he would not seek reelection, still could run as an independent candidate for mayor. He also could seek election to a four-year term as an at-large member of the City Council, according to some political advisers.

Citing “God’s mercy, his grace and his everlasting love,” Barry told his audience he had taken “a giant step toward healing” by spending seven weeks in substance abuse centers in Florida and South Carolina immediately after his arrest in the FBI sting last January.

Barry was recorded by a hidden FBI video camera as he smoked crack cocaine in a downtown hotel room with a former girlfriend, ex-model Rasheeda Moore, who was cooperating with the government. The 83-minute videotape was a keystone of the prosecution’s case.

Barry thanked his supporters “for your prayers and your compassion when my private and personal life was paraded before the world.” In an apparent reference to trial evidence that he had affairs with several women who used drugs with him, Barry said he also had asked for and received the forgiveness of his wife, Effi.

Referring to U.S. Atty. Jay B. Stephens’ stated intention to study the question of a retrial for several weeks, Barry thanked jurors for their difficult deliberations and said: “Let their judgment be our last judgment.”

Abbe Lowell, a former Justice Department lawyer, said he doubted that Stephens would retry the case. “There’s no reason to think he’d have any more success the second time around,” Lowell said.

Plato Cacheris, a prominent defense attorney who specializes in white-collar and political corruption cases, said he also considered a retrial unlikely.

“Given the depth of feelings in this city, the Barry case probably could be tried to a hung jury ad infinitum,” Cacheris said. “The jury apparently viewed the FBI sting as using an elephant gun instead of a flyswatter to get a mayor for a bunch of misdemeanors. This guy is no Manuel Noriega.”

Cacheris was referring to the deposed dictator of Panama, who is awaiting trial in a Miami jail on 11 counts of international drug smuggling.

Juror Johnnie Mae Hardeman told reporters the jury was evenly split on the charge relating to the FBI sting, an allegation that Barry possessed cocaine last Jan. 18. She said many jurors felt he had been “singled out” for prosecution by the government, and they doubted the truthfulness and motives of Barry’s chief accusers, who themselves were drug users.

A former prosecutor in the U.S. attorney’s office, who requested anonymity, agreed that Barry probably would not be retried. He said the sting operation “seemed a little too much for misdemeanor drug possession,” adding:

“When a jury is split that much, and where you don’t think it’s an aberration, it’s tough to retry a case and get better results.”

A high-ranking federal law enforcement official, who also requested anonymity, said that in sting operations “you always have to be worried about the totality of the circumstances, how a jury is going to view it.”

Although the sting was not entrapment, “there was an appearance that the government was bending over backward to get Marion Barry more than it would an average person,” the official conceded.

Other lawyers reached for comment said Stephens was likely to consider the divisive impact that another trial would have on residents of the District of Columbia, a factor that would weigh against retrying Barry.

Staff writer Ronald J. Ostrow contributed to this story.