Mixed Verdict, Divided City

During six weeks of sordid testimony, the drug and perjury trial of Mayor Marion Barry divided Washington. Barry's supporters, mostly black and mostly poor, charged that he had been unfairly hounded by a vengeful federal prosecutor determined to drive a powerful black elected official from his post. The mayor's critics, largely white and mainly middle class, argued that Barry's use of crack cocaine had disgraced the city and undermined the fight against drugs. Thus the divided judgment that the jury rendered last week after eight days of deliberations seemed oddly appropriate. The panel found Barry guilty of one misdemeanor count of possessing cocaine and acquitted him on a second drug possession charge but deadlocked on 12 other counts, including three felony charges of lying to a grand jury.

The mixed verdict allowed both sides to claim a partial vindication. U.S. Attorney Jay Stephens boasted that it proved "no man is above the law." Though the government could retry Barry on the charges for which no verdict was reached, it may decide not to do so. Nor is there much chance that Barry will be sent to prison for the misdemeanor conviction. Had Barry been found guilty of a felony, he would have been prohibited from holding elected office. Now he is free to run again, perhaps for the city council.

During the trial, government witnesses testified that Barry used drugs -- cocaine, opium and marijuana -- more than 200 times in homes and hotels, on ships and even at the 1988 Democratic Convention. A videotape of an FBI sting operation last January showed the mayor twice inhaling from a crack pipe in a downtown hotel room to which he had been invited by a former girlfriend, ex- model Rasheeda Moore. The mayor's lawyer, R. Kenneth Mundy, derided the government's witnesses as "little Lucifers" and charged that Barry had been the victim of an outrageous government vendetta.

If Barry's trial is over, his beleaguered city's is still under way. Washington faces a record number of drug-related homicides, a crack epidemic, growing pockets of intractable poverty and a shrinking middle-class tax base. At the top of the list are the racial animosities that Barry's ordeal brought to the surface. Says Howard University political scientist Ron Walters: "There's going to be one hell of a mending job that has to be done along the line. "