Prosecutor Details D.C. Gang Killings

Alleged Enforcer Faces Death Penalty

Prosecutors say murder was Larry Gooch's job. As an enforcer for a violent drug-dealing crew in Northeast Washington, authorities allege, he pulled the trigger in four slayings and aided in a fifth. He sold crack, PCP and ecstasy, according to an indictment, and tried to shoot a D.C. police officer to prevent a fellow gang member's arrest.

From the late 1990s until he was locked up in 2003, Gooch, now 27, was one of about two dozen young men in the heavily armed "M Street crew," which controlled the drug trade along 18th and M streets in the Kingman Park neighborhood, prosecutor Darlene Soltys said yesterday in her opening statement to a U.S. District Court jury.

As she spoke, describing the piles of cash that the gang allegedly raked in, Gooch sat a few feet away, expressionless, dressed in a preppy V-neck sweater and dark paisley necktie, his hair trimmed, his hands folded, his life in the balance.

In a city where public sentiment runs against capital punishment -- where voters rejected executions in a nonbinding 1992 referendum -- the U.S. attorney's office is trying for the third time in recent years to obtain a death sentence in the District under federal law. The move has angered some, including D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D).

"I have no quarrel with your vigorous prosecution of these cases," Norton told Interim U.S. Attorney Jeffrey A. Taylor in a letter Jan. 8, the day jury selection began for Gooch's trial. But in "this strongly anti-death penalty jurisdiction," she said, "there are a number of reasons to question the stepped-up death penalty prosecutions."

The U.S. attorney's office, barred from commenting on the Gooch case by a court-imposed gag order, sought the death penalty for convicted drug-gang killer Tommy Edelin in 2001. After jurors said no, Edelin got life in prison.

Two years later, when prosecutors sought capital punishment for Kevin Gray, convicted of 19 drug-related murders, and co-defendant Rodney Moore, found guilty of 10 killings, the jury deadlocked in the penalty phase, and the men got life prison terms.

"I believe that your office will continue to find it exceedingly difficult to get a jury of District residents to order the death penalty here," Norton wrote, saying "repeated prosecutions show neither a wise use of scarce resources nor a sensitivity to the needs of the communities of victims."

Selecting a "death qualified" jury -- 12 D.C. residents willing to vote for execution if the prosecution's evidence warrants it -- took a month in Gooch's case. U.S. District Judge Rosemary M. Collyer has set aside 14 weeks on her calendar for the trial.

Many of the two dozen or so defendants indicted in the case have been convicted or have pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors in exchange for reduced prison terms. The charges followed an 18-month investigation by D.C. police and the FBI involving undercover drug buys, wiretaps and hidden surveillance cameras in the neighborhood.

Gooch, on trial alone, is the only defendant facing a possible death sentence.

"Larry Gooch did not shoot anybody," defense attorney Thomas Heslep said yesterday in his opening statement. "He did not shoot at anybody. He was not a member of a drug conspiracy. . . . I'm not going to tell you he was an angel all of his life. . . . But he is factually innocent of this violence."