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

DATE: SATURDAY, March 27, 1993                   TAG: 9303270217
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Laurence Hammack Staff writter
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

INSANITY TESTIMONY QUESTIONED

SIX WEEKS AGO a jury found Roger Trenton Davis both sane and guilty. Now the psychologist who tried to argue Davis was insane is crying foul over the prosecution's chief witness. By LAURENCE HAMMACK STAFF When the so-called "marijuana martyr" entered an insanity plea to charges of selling cocaine, his trial became a battle of expert opinions about his true state of mind.

It still is, six weeks after a federal jury found Roger Trenton Davis to be both sane and guilty.

The dispute pits Tennessee psychologist Henry Grubb - who testified for the defense that, in his expert opinion, Davis was legally insane - against psychologist Edward Mahoney, who said the opposite when called as a government expert.

After the trial, Grubb decided to do some checking on his rival. He discovered that Mahoney was not licensed to practice in Illinois when he evaluated Davis at a Chicago prison.

Mahoney's evaluation was therefore flawed and his testimony "deliberately misleading to the court and jury," Grubb charged in an affidavit filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Roanoke.

For that reason, defense attorney David Damico is asking that Davis receive a new trial.

"The credibility of the two psychologists was really the only issue for the jury to decide," Damico said.

In pleading not guilty by reason of insanity, Davis readily admitted to selling a kilogram of cocaine to undercover police agents at a Roanoke golf course, but said he did so as a mission from God.

David said he sold the cocaine in order to spread the Lord's word: that white America is systematically killing blacks by first allowing the deadly spread of cocaine into their communities, then by bringing charges like the ones against him.

Grubb testified that Davis was a paranoid schizophrenic suffering delusions of being the savior for black people; Mahoney maintained that the insanity defense was a ploy.

Federal prosecutors relied on Mahoney's testimony to portray Davis' black genocide and insanity theories as a "transparent attempt" to avoid a possible sentence of life in prison.

Davis, 48, was dubbed the "marijuana martyr" by Playboy and Rolling Stone magazines after a Wythe County jury gave him a 40-year sentence for possessing a small amount of marijuana in 1974.

In claiming cruel and unusual punishment, Davis received national attention as that case went to the U.S. Supreme Court.

by CNB