Barry Given 6 Months in Jail on Drug Count : Courts: U.S. judge fines Washington mayor $5,000. He says official ‘gave aid, comfort’ to narcotics culture.

Mayor Marion Barry, whose trial last summer on drug charges polarized the nation’s capital, was sentenced Friday to six months in prison and fined $5,000 on his one-count misdemeanor conviction for drug possession.

U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson, in passing the stiff sentence, rejected Barry’s plea for leniency. He told the mayor that there were “aggravating circumstances” to his conviction, including his “frequent and conspicuous drug use . . . which gave aid, comfort and encouragement to the drug culture at large.”

The mayor’s chin dropped and his shoulders slumped as the judge told him he had found that Barry had taken part in “a willful attempt to obstruct justice” by lying to a federal grand jury investigating his use of cocaine. “Having failed as the good example he might have been, the defendant now must become an example of another kind,” the judge said.

Barry’s wife, Effi, who sat impassively through most of his trial this summer, cast her eyes down and seemed to be on the verge of tears as she heard the sentence. His mother, Mattie Cummings, clutching a Bible, sat alongside her.

The courtroom was packed with more than 100 spectators, members of the press and employees of the office of U.S. Atty. Jay B. Stephens, whose office prosecuted Barry after an investigation of more than two years.

Barry was allowed to remain free without bail pending his appeal, which could take 18 months to two years. Because he was convicted of a misdemeanor, the three-term mayor will not be forced to relinquish his office before his current term ends on Jan. 2. Nor will the sentence interfere with his campaign for election next month to an at-large seat on the City Council in the District of Columbia.

Barry, 54, told reporters outside the U.S. Courthouse that “there are different sets of standards for different people. That’s the American injustice system.”

Most first-time drug offenders who are convicted of a misdemeanor receive probation rather than jail time.

The 10-week trial of the black chief executive, which ended nearly three months ago, had transfixed the capital throughout the summer and strained race relations in this 70% black city. Black leaders across the country accused the U.S. attorney’s office of a vendetta against black elected officials because of leaks about investigations involving other black officials and the sting operation that was mounted to gain evidence to prosecute Barry. The Justice Department vehemently denied those charges.

A small, subdued crowd of Barry supporters, some with hand-lettered signs, gathered in front of the courthouse, but Barry avoided them and most reporters afterward by slipping out a side door. In the crowd, Harry Thomas, a member of the City Council, called the sentencing “rather harsh, being that he is the mayor of this city.”

Stephens, who earlier had recommended the maximum penalty of a year in prison, told reporters at a news conference later that Barry’s sentence was appropriate and “well within the range of the maximum sentence provided by law. Mr. Barry contributed to this city’s and this nation’s most devastating problem.”

Atty. Gen. Dick Thornburgh said in a statement that Barry’s sentence “brings this case to a just conclusion and sends a clear and continuing message that the use of illegal drugs will not be tolerated in our society.”

The mayor’s attorney, R. Kenneth Mundy, noted to reporters after the sentencing that several aides to former President Ronald Reagan had received community service instead of jail time for first offenses, including Iran-Contra figure Oliver L. North and former Deputy Chief of Staff Michael K. Deaver.

Jackson, appointed to the bench by Reagan, fined Deaver $100,000 and gave him 1,500 hours of community service two years ago on his felony perjury conviction.

Under new sentencing guidelines for the federal courts, Barry must serve his full six months behind bars with no time off for good behavior. On completion of that term, Jackson put him on supervised probation for a year, meaning that he must report regularly to a probation officer and be subject to periodic drug tests.

In convicting Barry of a single misdemeanor, jurors acquitted him of another misdemeanor drug count and were unable to agree on 12 other charges, including three felony counts of lying to a grand jury in denying cocaine use with a friend, convicted drug trafficker Charles Lewis.

Federal prosecutors urged Jackson before the sentencing to consider Barry’s conviction an “aggravated” one--and thus subject to a heavier penalty--because he since has admitted to repeated use of cocaine and only Thursday acknowledged in a court filing that he was an addict.

In court, Barry told Jackson he had been free of alcohol and drugs for 279 consecutive days since he spent seven weeks in substance-abuse treatment centers in Florida and South Carolina after his arrest in an FBI sting operation last January.

The sting, which resulted in most of the charges against him, occurred when Barry was photographed by a hidden camera smoking crack cocaine in a hotel room with a former girlfriend who had cooperated with the FBI.

Barry told the court Friday that his drug activities were “out of character,” adding that “my wife, Effi, would not have married such a man 10 years ago.”

“I stand here truly remorseful,” he said, “and I ask this court to impose community service as a sentence.”

“The defendant has not owned up to what he has done for a period of over five years,” Assistant U.S. Atty. Judith E. Retchin told Jackson. “There is a pattern to his use of illegal drugs, and he used his position to obtain those drugs. This is hardly a simple misdemeanor committed by a first-time offender.”

Jackson agreed that Barry had abused “his public trust,” adding that “his conduct has inspired others to emulate him.” At the same time, the judge said there were “some mitigating circumstances.”

“He has admitted his alcoholism and his compulsive use of cocaine, and he appears to be making significant progress in rehabilitating himself,” Jackson said.

Defense attorney Mundy cited Barry’s activities as a civil rights advocate “in the violent period of the 1960s” and said, as mayor, Barry had devoted himself “to education, to the problems of the unemployed and to the elderly.”

“I ask the court not to judge Mr. Barry as the government would have on evidence of unproven charges that the jury did not buy into,” Mundy added. “It’s for the public to judge Marion Barry . . . as to what his future role will be, if any.”