Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, May 8, 1990 TAG: 9005080474
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LESLIE TAYLOR STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Robert G. Wright, 34, was one of six people charged with taking part in a ring that brought 4 to 10 kilograms of powdered cocaine from Miami to Roanoke each month - one of the largest catches by Operation Caribbean Sunset. The cocaine was believed to have been obtained regularly from two Colombian brothers in Miami and smuggled aboard commercial flights to Virginia.
"Of the 300 or so arrests made in Caribbean Sunset so far, Wright is the most violent one convicted, as far as I'm concerned," Assistant U.S. Attorney Tom Bondurant said. Bondurant, who asked Judge Jackson Kiser to sentence Wright to life imprisonment, called the 35-year sentence without possibility of parole "appropriate."
Wright's case has been filled with unusual twists since he was indicted in August. In September, he was left homeless when his Roanoke and Roanoke County homes were seized by federal agents.
In November, a key government witness and co-defendant in the case, Loxley Walters, disappeared on the day Wright's trial was scheduled to begin. Walters was picked up last month in Cleveland, Ohio.
When Wright's case finally went to trial in December, a jury convicted him of cocaine charges, but not before hearing testimony that he had consulted with a Washington, D.C., voodoo doctor and a voodoo priestess in Baton Rouge, La. Testimony by Larry Garland, a co-defendant, indicated Wright had paid hundreds of dollars in exchange for their promises to cast a spell rendering police unable to arrest him.
Garland, Walters and Terry Lee Jones, another co-defendant, are in jail awaiting sentencing, Bondurant said. All three pleaded guilty last year to various charges, including cocaine conspiracy and possession, and agreed to testify against other defendants in the case.
Wright's attorney, Jack Kennett, argued Monday that his client was not the "superior" in the group that authorities believed.
"In the scheme of things, he was the low man on the totem pole" and not "one of those people on a banana boat bringing stuff in. His degree of culpability in the drug world is very slight," Kennett said.
Wright did not have a reputation for drug-related crimes but rather crimes of violence, Kennett said. His remark prompted Kiser to comment, "If ever the phrase `damned with faint praise' was appropriate . . . "
Wright's criminal record includes convictions of assault and malicious wounding.
"He has intimidated his way through life," Bondurant said. "Look at his employment. He held down a job here and there but basically he never worked. Yet he had brand new cars, houses, stereo equipment. The guy was a full-time dope dealer."
by CNB