Barry Begins Prison Term for Cocaine Conviction

Former Washington, D.C., Mayor Marion Barry arrived at the Federal Correctional Institution here Saturday to begin serving a six-month sentence for cocaine possession.

Prison officials allowed Barry to enter through a back gate to avoid about 30 reporters and photographers outside the main gate.

The car in which Barry was riding pulled within about a quarter-mile of the front gate Saturday afternoon before turning around. A short time later, Warden Patrick Whalen told reporters that Barry had voluntarily surrendered to begin his sentence.

Asked why Barry entered through a back gate, Whalen said “any inmate with a high profile” would get that kind of treatment.

Prison spokesman Eugene Ray said that Barry probably would be assigned to janitorial, landscape or garage work, for which he would earn 12 cents an hour.

Before leaving for prison, Barry held a news conference at his home. “I stand here mentally, physically, emotionally and spiritually prepared to report to . . . federal prison,” he said. “God has given me the strength and courage to carry on.”

Barry, who continued to maintain he was unfairly singled out for a jail sentence because he was a leading black politician, was flanked by his mother and nearly 100 supporters.

The three-term chief executive of the District of Columbia renewed his criticism of U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson for imposing the six-month sentence for his first-time misdemeanor drug possession conviction.

“What is highly unusual is that on most convictions of this nature, 85% convicted of a first-time cocaine possession . . . receive probation, community service or some lesser probation,” Barry said.

Barry was arrested in a Washington hotel Jan. 18, 1990, in a sting operation by the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Administration.

Authorities, who used a hidden camera to film Barry using cocaine, filed 14 charges against the mayor. A jury, however, only convicted Barry of using drugs in a separate incident in 1989.