Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, July 6, 1990                   TAG: 9007060743
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A/1   EDITION: EVENING 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

JUDGE ADMITS ACTIVISTS TO TRIAL

U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson said Nation of Islam Minister Louis Farrakhan and Imani Temple Bishop George Stallings will be permitted to attend the trial as long as they "observe the proprieties of the court."

Last week the judge refused to allow the two in as spectators, saying their presence would be potentially disruptive and was likely to be intimidating.

He reversed himself after a court of appeals said spectators cannot be barred merely because they advocate a particular political or religious point of view. Farrakhan and Stallings sought to attend the trial on passes given to Barry.

Stallings broke away from the Washington Archdiocese of the Roman Catholic Church a year ago, calling it hopelessly racist. He was later excommunicated and founded Imani Temple.

Farrakhan has "never been a disruptive force," said Chicago attorney Louis Myers, general counsel to the Nation of Islam.

"I felt that was insulting," Myers told the judge, referring to Jackson's comment last week about disruption and intimidation.

American Civil Liberties Union attorney Arthur Spitzer renewed a motion for Jackson to vacate his orders of last week relating to Farrakhan and Stallings. The judge did so without hearing any arguments.

"I am prepared to grant the relief," said Jackson. Spitzer and Myers assured the judge that Stallings and Farrakhan would observe court decorum.

"The judge tried to establish that you can't walk into the middle of a public trial and disrupt it," said John Aldock, a private attorney representing the judge in the matter.

Myers took issue with that. "We want to send a signal to any court of law, any other judge in America who desires to do something similar . . . we will beat them," he said.

The appeals court refused to order that Farrakhan and Stallings be admitted, sending the matter back to Jackson to hear arguments from the two black leaders.

Meanwhile, an FBI forensics expert testified at Barry's trial on drug and perjury charges that traces of cocaine were found last month on business cards recovered from the coat pockets of one of the mayor's suits.

The testimony was designed to bolster the government's assertions of frequent drug use by the mayor, who is accused of 10 counts of cocaine possession and one count of conspiracy. He also is on trial on three felony charges of lying to a grand jury about his alleged involvement with drugs.

"There were traces of cocaine on each of the three groups of business cards" found in the pockets of Barry's coat, testified FBI agent Thomas Lynch. The coat was seized by the FBI in the mayor's Jan. 18 arrest at the Vista International Hotel in an FBI sting.

Lynch testified that the scientific tests on the business cards were not conducted until mid-June. There was no explanation for the delay.

Lynch also testified that crack cocaine was recovered from a small pocket of Barry's suit. The FBI had supplied crack to ex-model Rasheeda Moore for the sting operation against Barry. Moore testified that Barry put some of the crack in his pocket just before his arrest.