Marion Barry and Eliot Spitzer
Different Pursuits of Justice?
2008-03-20
By Del Walters

The resignation of New York Governor Eliot Spitzer only serves to remind us that there are two systems of justice in the United States, one black and one white. A decades old black and white grainy video tells the true tale of the tape.   The videotape was recorded when another high profile politician went down in flames.  It was recorded the night former D.C. Mayor Marion Barry was arrested inside a room at the Vista Hotel.  While it would not be made public for months, the next day the damage had already been done.  Rumors of what was on the tape surfaced that night.  There were reports Barry had engaged in oral sex, and overdosed, neither of which proved true.  I know, I was one of the many reporters who covered the entire sordid ordeal.  I had to track down each and every unsavory detail of Marion Barry’s demise for months that stretched into years. 

The eighty three minute video tape was recorded by the FBI on January 18th, 1990 and can still be found on the web today.  It showed Marion Barry inside a hotel room with a woman, who was not his wife, named Rasheeda Hazel Moore, an FBI plant there to set him up.  The now famous refrain, ‘”the goddamned Bitch set me up,” was printed on tee shirts and sold by street  vendors as if the arrest and subsequent humiliation weren’t enough. Washington D.C. was paralyzed for months.  Older African Americans felt betrayed by a black politician, some blamed the woman, some blamed the pipe, some blamed Barry, and others argued he got his comeuppance.

Don’t get me wrong, Marion Barry got everything he deserved.  He picked up the pipe, smoked the crack, and even more importantly checked into the Vista Hotel that night with the other woman.  That should serve as a warning to every politician yet to come.  The downfall begins when the key is placed inside the door.  Marion Barry didn’t get it, Eliot Spitzer didn’t either.  But here’s the rub. 

The video tape, recorded that night, showed FBI agents from the Washington Field Office Busting through the door mere moments after the crack pipe graced Barry’s lips.  There was even an ambulance standing by just in case he overdosed.  And yet, when news reports surfaced that Eliot Spitzer was caught up in a similar FBI sting, it came as a result of a New York Times reporter learning about the FBI’s surveillance of an escort ring inside the Mayflower Hotel. Even though it all occurred in the same city, with the same FBI few could argue the initial treatment was anything but different.  ‘The deed’ in this case had long since ended and Spitzer was already back at home, in New York, the beneficiary of days of plotting and planning his alibi.  No agents burst through the door immediately after the act was done, and Spitzer was unaware he had even been caught. Marion Barry on the other hand, knew it that night and so did the rest of the world.  

The next morning, that world watched as Barry emerged from a courtroom, with his attorney by his side, literally guilty until proven innocent.  Like Spitzer there were immediate calls for his ouster, and like Spitzer we watched as another political figure was paraded before the cameras afforded no benefit of any doubt. That’s what happens when the key is turned.  I can never forget the sniping inside the massive media army that gathered overnight and the common refrain  “they finally got him.”  

I knew who he was, but still wonder who “they” were.  Now, as I look back at both incidents, I find myself wondering whether “they” acted correctly in the case of Eliot Spitzer, or incorrectly in the case of Marion Barry?  Was there a judicial double standard, or had the agency learned from the Barry episode that these incidents are explosive and can destroy the fabric of an entire community for years. 

Think back, there was Barry being arrested, emerging from court, checking into rehab, checking out of rehab, standing accused, standing strong, standing trial and being acquitted on some counts  and guilty on others including in the court of public opinion.  There was Marion Barry going to jail, emerging from jail, running, winning and running again…and again…and again.  Even today, when Barry is picked up for a traffic ticket it is news, or is it?  Will New Yorkers endure the same with Eliot Spitzer?

In the end Washington was forced to endure an 18 day trial that made the likes of R. Kenneth Mundy, and Jay Stevens household names.  The Nation of Islam provided security and the networks offered wall to wall coverage. As for the woman, Rasheeda Moore simply faded away to join the likes of others who used their bodies to snare the weak.  Back then there was no MySpace page to explain why she may have done what she did.  The truth was, few cared.  It was an unsavory incident in which there were no winners, only losers. Her imaged etched forever on a black and white grainy videotape. 

So let’s go to the videotape.  It will take a video to determine whether the FBI has grown from its day in the Marion Barry case, or whether there are indeed two forms of justice when it comes to white and black politicians.  This is not an argument of whether either is guilty or innocent, but an argument about equal justice, and, in this case, equal pursuit.  Somewhere in the evidence room of the Spitzer case, there exists a grainy videotape of Eliot Spitzer doing ‘the deed’ with a young woman identified only in court documents as ‘Kristen’.

If not, something else is terribly wrong with this picture. 

Del Walters is an Emmy award-winning investigate reporter, filmmaker and author.