Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, February 10, 1993 TAG: 9302100148
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By LAURENCE HAMMACK STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
`MARIJUANA MARTYR' CLAIMS INSANITY DEFENSE
After all the years he spent in prison on marijuana charges, you would think Roger Trenton Davis was crazy for going back to drug dealing.Which is exactly what he wants a jury to believe.
In a trial that began Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Roanoke, the so-called "marijuana martyr" pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity to charges that he sold a kilogram of cocaine to undercover police officers nearly two years ago.
It wasn't just a drug deal, Davis contends. It was a mission from God.
According to his insanity theory, Davis' arrest was a preordained event that allowed him to deliver a holy message: That white America is engaged in a campaign of genocide against blacks through the deadly spread of cocaine.
"Mr. Davis sees himself as some sort of savior to the black people," said Henry Grubb, a Tennessee psychologist who diagnosed Davis as a legally insane paranoid schizophrenic.
Davis, 47, believes the white power structure is allowing the importation of cocaine into the United States in a calculated effort to kill off blacks, at the same time increasing its own standing by creating more white, middle-class jobs in criminal-justice fields.
The black race eventually will be annihilated, Grubb said in explaining Davis' beliefs to the jury, as increasing numbers of young black males are claimed by "death, disease, intoxication and incarceration."
Davis' insanity plea is disputed by federal prosecutors. They say his true state of mind is not clouded by mental illness, but motivated by a clear desire to escape a possible sentence of life in prison.
"He's going to play the insanity card and he's going to play the race card," Assistant U.S. Attorney Joe Mott told the jury in his opening arguments.
Insanity defenses to criminal charges are rare; even more so in drug cases. Mott said the defense usually is used in impulsive crimes, such as homicides.
To be acquitted by reason of insanity, someone must be determined to be so mentally disturbed at the time of the offense that he or she could not distinguish right from wrong.
"In his delusional system, [Davis] knows what he is doing," Grubb testified. But his version of right and wrong does not necessarily conform with societal norms, the psychologist said.
As is often his habit, Judge James Turk interrupted the witness several times with his own line of questioning.
"You can pick up a magazine and read where someone is saying that," Turk said of the black-genocide theory. "You don't call those people psychotic, do you?"
At another point, Turk recounted a tale of how two accused bank robbers in his court almost succeeded in faking insanity. "They had totally pulled the wool over the eyes of the psychiatrists," he said.
The jury is expected to begin deliberations today in what is Davis' fifth trial on drug charges. He gained national attention in 1974 after a Wythe County jury gave him a staggering sentence for possessing a small amount of marijuana.
Because the jury's 40-year sentence was so out of line with a national average of about three years for similar offenses, Rolling Stone and Playboy magazines dubbed Davis the "marijuana martyr."
He was convicted two more times on marijuana charges after that.
In testimony Tuesday, federal agents from Tennessee told the jury how Davis found them through an informant as he searched for a buyer for his $34,000 kilogram - about 2.2 pounds - of cocaine.
One undercover agent in Nashville posed as a music contractor who dabbled in the cocaine business on the side. In tape-recorded telephone calls played to the jury, their conversations were sprinkled with code words such as "keyboard" for kilogram.
Davis was arrested after the agents drove to Roanoke and arranged a drug transaction in the parking lot of a golf course.
Defense attorney David Damico said his client knew all along that it was a bust, but went along in order to express his views about drugs.
The only question, Damico told the jury, is: "Should he go to jail, or should he be in a hospital somewhere?"