THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, March 22, 1996 TAG: 9603220523
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JOE JACKSON, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: Medium: 73 lines
Commonwealth's Attorney Charles D. Griffith Jr. apparently did not know of the conjugal visits drug informant Gary Weathers received in federal offices in exchange for his assistance, said the former lawyer of a man arrested with Weathers' help.
``I don't believe Mr. Griffith knew the conjugal visits occurred,'' Duncan St. Clair testified Thursday in federal court during a hearing for William Kenneth Banks, who pleaded guilty in May 1990 to drug charges and was sentenced two months later to 19 years and seven months in federal prison.
St. Clair was Banks' attorney when he pleaded guilty. Griffith was the federal prosecutor in charge of the Banks case and related cases when the trysts occurred, court records show.
St. Clair is the third person to testify or comment in court records about Griffith's knowledge of the trysts. Weathers and lead FBI agent James Watters have said they thought Griffith knew of the visits.
Griffith has denied any knowledge of the trysts when the cases were tried.
Banks is seeking to have his guilty plea overturned and be granted a new trial because the government failed to disclose that Weathers received the trysts in the downtown DEA offices in exchange for his help in investigating and prosecuting a major Portsmouth heroin ring in the early 1990s.
Banks was arrested after Weathers called him from the DEA offices and asked him to pick up a package presumed to be drugs, testimony showed. Weathers, who pretended to be calling from prison, asked Banks to exchange the package for money, then give the money to his family. The phone calls and exchange were recorded by the Drug Enforcement Administration; the package was filled with flour.
Last year, Weathers, considered a major drug dealer, told a reporter that in May and June 1990, he received the conjugal visits while members of a regional drug task force - composed of agents of the FBI, DEA, state police and Portsmouth Police Department - either took lunch or looked the other way. In exchange for his help, Weathers was allowed several lunchtime visits with his wife and at least one visit with his girlfriend. Weathers and his wife conceived twins during one of the visits.
Weathers' information was central to the probe that resulted in the convictions of about 15 dealers, five of whom were sentenced to life without parole. But because the trysts were not revealed to defense attorneys during the trial, seven of those men last year received dramatically reduced sentences or now await new hearings in federal court.
Weathers' conjugal visits were brought to light in 1994 by Marvin Pointer, a co-defendant in the conspiracy trial. In summer and fall 1994, the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility investigated Pointer's allegations. The OPR's report - which had never been made public - was quoted liberally in the plea for a new trial of yet another co-defendant, Sam Collins.
According to the report, FBI agent Watters and task force members Richard McGoldrick and H.C. Davis arranged for the visits. The OPR report also addressed the role of Griffith, who had ultimate responsibility for informing the defense of the visits.
Watters told Justice investigators that he thought Griffith was aware of the visits, but that he had ``no distinct recollection of specifically advising Griffith,'' the report said.
Last year, Weathers said he thought Griffith knew of the visits: ``One time before (Pointer's) trial, I was going to be debriefed when Griffith came up and said, `I heard you were going to be a father again,' '' he said. ``I just smiled.''
Griffith has said he knew nothing of the trysts and would not have condoned them. ``We don't make deals like that,'' he has said.
U.S. District Judge J. Calvitt Clarke Jr. will rule later on whether Banks should be granted a new trial. by CNB