Marion Barry
 Marion Barry       (politician) | |
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| Born | Marion Barry Jr March 6, 1936 Itta Bena, Mississippi, U.S. |
| Died | November 23, 2014 (Age 78) Washington, D.C., U.S. |
| Nationality | US |
| Party | Democrat |
Black Washington DC mayor convicted of drug possession after intense, multi-year FBI sting operation. Political comeback.
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Marion Shepilov Barry was an American politician and mayor of the District of Columbia from 1979 to 1991 and 1995 to 1999.
Arrest
Arrested, convicted and imprisoned for using cocaine in an FBI entrapment operation. Later re-elected as Washington DC/Mayor.[1]
Prosecution
The Washington Post wrote: "You do not have to be a member of the 'Re-elect Marion Barry Mayor' campaign to have some heavy, nagging doubts about the manner of Mayor Barry's investigation and prosecution. Not only were his conduct of office and his personal life the object of intense, probing official scrutiny for years -- long past the time that a dry-hole investigation of someone else might have been dropped. The actual circumstances of his arrest, when it finally came, involved an almost embarrassingly abundant measure of federal artfulness and contrivance, not to say a troublesome element of a trap. On the latter score, some of the mayor's sympathizers believe he has a good legal defense of entrapment to the charge of drug possession. Others, including many with no brief for the mayor, speak in more general terms of trickery, disproportionality and unfairness; they are uneasy about the overbearing, almost obsessive way the authorities pursued him for what turns out to be only an alleged misdemeanor."[2]
In the obituary, Marsha Coleman-Adebayo wrote: "Barry was a four-term mayor despite FBI stings and US government tactics that violated every moral and ethical barrier. There was clearly a target on his back and those in high places made the destruction of Marion Barry a priority. But every time the system thought they had destroyed him, he found an extraordinary inner strength to push back. No doubt, his indiscipline and recklessness provided ample opportunities for his enemies to strike but his courage to fight and his stamina provided the fortitude to prevail."[3]
