THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, May 24, 1995 TAG: 9505240483
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: BY MASON PETERS, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 73 lines
U.S. Rep. Eva M. Clayton said Tuesday that her lawyer-son never represented nor sought favors for a man accused in two carjackings and one slaying.
The crimes have involved U.S. Attorney Janice McKenzie Cole - whose office declined to prosecute the man - in a controversy with two Republican congressmen.
Clayton supported Cole's appointment by President Clinton, in 1992, to become one of the nation's first black and first female U.S. attorneys. Cole now is the chief federal prosecutor for the Eastern District of North Carolina. Clayton herself is the first woman and the first black to be elected to Congress from North Carolina since the turn of the century. A Democrat, she represents the 1st District.
Last week, U.S. Rep. Walter B. Jones Jr., a 3rd District Republican from Farmville, demanded that the U.S. solicitor general find out why Cole refused to bring federal charges against Dexter Harris, a black man accused by the state of carjacking and murder.
Jones told the solicitor general that Theaoseus Clayton Jr., a 36-year-old Raleigh attorney who is the son of Rep. Clayton, represented Harris and sought to avoid stiffer federal carjacking penalties for his client.
But Clayton said in a statement Tuesday that she ``had discussed the matter'' with her son and determined that he had ``never been retained'' by Harris.
``At the request of a member of Harris' family, Theaoseus Clayton Jr. briefly spoke with Mr. Harris but never representedhim in any way,'' Clayton said.
Jones wrote the solicitor general after Rep. Fred Heineman, another newly elected North Carolina Republican and a former Raleigh police chief, accused Cole of playing ``mind games'' with the Wake County district attorney's office in Raleigh.
According to Heineman, Cole's office refused to prosecute Harris, claiming there was a lack of evidence that Harris threatened ``bodily harm'' to a carjack victim. The victim was locked for six hours in a car truck, but she escaped.
Harris could have been held under tougher U.S. carjacking laws, Heineman said, but was released by Wake County authorities. Subsequently, Harris was charged with being involved in a second carjacking in which the victim, a young Nash County mother, was pulled from her vehicle and brutally slain.
Heineman said he thought that six hours of imprisonment in a car trunk constituted ``bodily injury,'' but a spokesman for Cole said no federal charges were pressed because U.S. prosecutors doubted they could make a case.
Heineman joined Jones in seeking a critical examination of Cole's office.
``Congressman Heineman sent a letter to Attorney General Janet Reno to ask her to look into this,'' Earl Whipple, Heineman's spokesman in Washington, said Tuesday.
In the letter to Solicitor General Charles A. Bowsher, Rep. Jones also asked for an investigation into a U.S. Attorney in Little Rock, Ark., for declining to ``pursue criminal referrals'' in the Whitewater savings and loan inquiry that involves friends of Clinton and his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Some supportive Democrats in the 1st District this week suggested that criticism of Cole was politically motivated to diminish her future chances for appointment to a federal judgeship. Cole's husband, James Carlton Cole of Hertford, is a judge for the state's 1st Judicial District. ILLUSTRATION: Eva M. Clayton
Walter B. Jones
by CNB