U.S. Won’t Retry Barry in Drugs, Perjury Case : Narcotics: Judge will sentence the Washington mayor next month on a single drug conviction. He could get a year in prison and a $100,000 fine.

The government made official Monday what defense attorneys and law enforcement officers had predicted for weeks: Mayor Marion Barry will not be retried on federal drug and perjury charges.

“The government has made a determination not to seek retrial” of 12 counts on which Barry’s jury deadlocked last month, Assistant U.S. Atty. Judith Retchin told U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson in a three-minute court proceeding.

“A retrial would achieve little more than what already has been accomplished,” U.S. Atty Jay Stephens said on the courthouse steps. “The ultimate truth will remain that the chief executive of this city, charged with leading the fight against illegal drugs and violence, has himself been convicted of contributing to that human devastation.”

Jackson set Oct. 26 for sentencing Barry on the single drug-possession charge on which he was convicted. It is a misdemeanor punishable by a maximum of a year in prison and a $100,000 fine.

“The overwhelming evidence now is a matter of public record,” said Stephens. “The court will take into account the full range of his conduct.”

“I’m obviously relieved at this phase of the legal proceedings,” Barry said. He declined further comment until his sentencing next month.

Legal authorities had predicted that Stephens would abandon the case because jurors had been so badly split on the undecided charges. With a unanimous verdict needed on each count, jurors said in interviews after the trial that they had been divided, 6 to 6 or 7 to 5, on most of the charges, which included three felony counts of perjury.

At a political rally the day after his trial, Barry apologized to Washington residents for his drug involvement, which he said was over and appealed for “a time for healing” of racial tensions occasioned by his federal prosecution. He subsequently announced his plans to run for one of two at-large seats on the City Council to be filled in the November election.

Before the trial, Barry had announced that he would not seek an unprecedented fourth term as mayor.

Stephens told reporters that election-year considerations had not caused him to abandon thoughts of a retrial. Asked if the rekindling of racial tensions had affected his thinking, he said: “The results (of my decision) may well have an effect on the ability of the city to heal itself but this was not a factor that was weighed specifically.”

Ten prosecution witnesses who had been friends of the mayor testified during his eight-week trial that they had used drugs with him repeatedly over a period of years.

In addition, FBI agents used a concealed camera to photograph Barry smoking crack cocaine in a hotel room last January with a former girlfriend, Rasheeda Moore, who cooperated in the “sting.”

Although Judge Jackson is unlikely to give Barry a jail sentence for a first-time misdemeanor offense, Stephens declared that “there is an adequate basis for sentencing Mr. Barry.”

He declined to say what punishment the government would recommend, explaining that it would be spelled out in a presentence memorandum to be filed within 30 days.