Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, January 17, 1993 TAG: 9301170129
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: E-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARGARET EDDS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Medium
GANG TRIAL TO BE GROUNDBREAKER
In a city in which violent death has become commonplace, the Newtowne Gang stands accused of elevating terror to unfathomable heights.The New Jersey-linked gang was responsible last winter for 11 killings in 45 days, federal prosecutors say.
One victim was stabbed 84 times in the face and neck. Another was stabbed 18 times and shot twice. On the night of Feb. 1, four people died - three in a triple slaying, another as his sister was wounded and her three children watched in horror.
Those accusations have culminated in a groundbreaking trial expected to last more than a month in U.S. District Court here. In a courtroom crowded with lawyers and onlookers, three men stand charged with murder, drug distribution and conspiracy.
What could get them executed, and sets the trial apart, is the government's contention they murdered to further "a continuing criminal enterprise." That capital charge was established in 1989 under the federal drug kingpin statute as a tool in the nation's drug war.
The Newtowne Gang trial - the gang is named for a Richmond neighborhood - is the first in the nation in which several defendants face execution simultaneously under the drug kingpin law.
The trial pits the office of U.S. Attorney Richard Cullen, who won Justice Department approval to bring the charges, against civil libertarians who say individual justice is impossible in the mass trial.
"This story is a part of the war on drugs," argued Richmond lawyer Eric White, who represents one of the defendants. "War is not fair. Justice must be."
But Cullen, who has made gun-related violence a priority as the federal prosecutor for eastern Virginia, countered: "The trial of gangs as a group is the only fair way to get the truth . . . When you want to find out which kid took the cookie out of the cookie jar, you get all of the kids together."
For Richmond, where the murder rate has soared to fourth highest in the nation, the trial is a chilling reminder of the brutal link between drugs and guns. And it is yet another example of the multiple strategies officials are testing in the scramble to stem the murder tide.
Defendants in the Newtowne trial are Richard R. "Whitey" Tipton, 22; Cory "C.O." Johnson, 24; and James H. Roane Jr., 27. Johnson has spent most of his life in New York and Trenton, N.J. Roane grew up in Richmond, and Tipton traveled back and forth between Richmond and Trenton.
As outlined by prosecutors, the Newtowne Gang was an outgrowth of a Trenton drug operation that involved a group of friends - the "New York Boys" - who'd grown up on a single block in Harlem.
When key members of the New York Boys were arrested in 1991, Johnson and Tipton reportedly came south, hoping to duplicate in Richmond their success at selling crack cocaine. Among those they enlisted, prosecutors charge, was Roane, a small-time drug dealer in the city's projects.
Roane, implicated in fewer murders, is sitting apart from Tipton and Johnson in the courtroom.
The government maintains that the violence began early in 1992, as police were closing in on the drug dealing. The victims, slain between Jan. 5 and Feb. 19, died primarily because the defendants feared they knew too much about the operation, prosecutors say.
Others allegedly were murdered because of minor drug debts or because they were business rivals. In one case, officials say, Roane gunned down a man who had become involved with his girlfriend.
Among more than 90 government witnesses, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Howard Vick Jr., will be a 7-year-old "who watched J.R. blow away his uncle and shoot his mother six times."
Even that accumulation of witnesses cannot describe "the sheer weight of the brutality of the crime that has been committed," Vick told the jury Thursday.
The heart of the collective defense appears to be that - even if murders occurred - they were not part of a "continuing criminal enterprise." Cross-examining early witnesses, attorneys appeared bent on showing that the New Jersey and Richmond operations were not linked, and that profits from the drug sales in Richmond were relatively minor.
Throughout, defense attorneys seemed determined that their clients not be painted with identical brushes.
David Baugh, Roane's attorney, insisted that "my client did not sell drugs with anyone else" and that the only murder he committed was the crime of passion involving his girlfriend. "It's bad. It's sad," said Baugh. But "it should have been prosecuted in state court."