jonetta rose barras: Rayful Edmond and the rock refusing to hide him

Thankfully, I hadn’t gone on a sizzling summer Saturday to the Frank A. Reeves Municipal Center at 14th and U streets NW for any respite from the heat. The opinions that were being shared openly or quietly whispered by District residents attending the forum in the community room were pretty hot and intense. Rather, I went because I wanted to hear firsthand how people were reacting to the fact that federal prosecutors were interested in reducing the life sentence of Rayful Edmond III, a known drug kingpin and criminal predator who, with family and friends, terrorized the nation’s capital during the 1980s and into the 1990s, spreading crack cocaine like it was water and allegedly murdering people who impeded their operation.

Edmond has been trying to play his get-out-of-jail card since 2014, after he reportedly helped the feds snag a few of his drug-dealing compatriots. At a hearing earlier this year, James Downs, his attorney, declared that his client is “due his freedom.”

This is not a Fourth of July column.

When U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan considered the feds’ request for a sentence reduction and possible early release, he pondered the reaction of DC residents to a free Edmond. Audaciously, the federal prosecutor asserted that he spoke for the 700,000 residents of the nation’s capital, which is yet another reason DC needs to reclaim its judicial system. 

Sullivan ignored the prosecutor’s arrogance and named DC Attorney General Karl Racine a friend of the court. The AG was asked to solicit views of local residents. His office organized three forums for that purpose; The DC Line reported on the first of them. The one at the Reeves Center last Saturday was the final installment. Racine is expected to file an amicus brief by Aug. 30.

“Rayful Edmond is not just a drug kingpin,” said an emotional Elizabeth Hall. “He was part of an organized crime family. They murdered and slaughtered people. He decimated this city.” Think of Catherine Fuller, who was attacked and sodomized with a pipe in an alley behind the 800 block of H Street NE, the site of a known open-air drug market back in the 1980s. According to published reports, Edmond and his enterprise were responsible for as many as 30 known homicides in the city. And a whole bunch of folks lived in absolute fear.

“I was personally impacted by him,” added Hall.

A woman named Susan didn’t testify, but after the forum she told me that she lived in the 14th and U streets neighborhood in the 1980s. She cited DC’s lack of statehood as one reason residents are even confronted with the prospect of Edmond’s potential release. “Would this be happening in Columbus, Ohio, or Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania? We get stuck because we’re not independent. It’s a bigger issue,” she said. “How much are we spending on this process? There is something so wrong about all of this.” 

Racine wasn’t prepared to share his views with me about what might be his recommendation. His office has heard from more than 400 citizens, mostly online, and is still sorting out their input. However, he said he was “impressed” by the residents who had come out to speak on both sides of the issue and “how incredibly respectful” they had been of each other, despite the obvious levels of passion and emotion that had been involved. He agreed with Susan that the District is a captive of the federal system. The one bright light was Judge Sullivan’s “historic” response, which perhaps has opened the door for District residents to be involved in other cases in federal court, said Racine.

He wasn’t the only one trying to offer a positive spin. Some people, citing Edmond’s cooperation in other federal drug cases, argued that Edmond had turned things around and deserved another chance. They also mentioned redemption and forgiveness. However, Edmond’s decision to provide evidence came only after he was caught running a drug ring inside a federal prison in Pennsylvania. Equally important, the benefits of sharing his knowledge included the early release of his mother and another relative — both of whom had worked in Edmond’s crime organization.

“Whatever information Mr. Edmond offered … has been offered in his self-interests, not in the interest of ecumenical justice or spiritual atonement,” Ward 5 advisory neighborhood commissioner Robert Vinson Brannum countered during Saturday’s forum. It was Brannum’s second time testifying against any reduction or early release.

“Not even through his federal prosecutorial emissaries has Mr. Edmond offered words of contrition, remorse, regret, shame, sorrow or even an apology,” added Brannum. 

Over the past several weeks, I have thought about the children on whom Edmond and others like him preyed. Some were lured by the promise of a good life; others were brought into the business because either they or their parents feared the consequences of what could happen if they said no. “When Edmond picked up a bill here and there for neighbors who were short of cash, there was always a catch,” a former drug addict and victim of the crack epidemic told the Washington City Paper in 2000. “If he paid your bills, that meant he wanted to hustle from your house. If he bought your kid sneakers, he wanted your kid to hustle for him.”

Babies didn’t escape Edmond’s clutches either. Many were born addicted to crack because their mothers had been captured by that insidious drug. A cadre of volunteers, many of them grandmothers, were called into service to provide soothing and comfort to those children, who couldn’t seem to stop crying or shaking.

The court reporter recording comments at Saturday’s forum, moved by the testimony he heard, went to the microphone. He seemed compelled to provide context for the discussion, offering a more global and political perspective for what happened in the 1980s. One big point, he noted, was that crack was in many urban centers, and Edmond wasn’t the only one to blame for its entry. He referenced reports about drug smuggling in connection with a covert scheme by President Ronald Reagan’s administration to fund an operation to overthrow Daniel Ortega and his Sandinista National Liberation Front in Nicaragua.

As I listened to his analysis and explanation, I kept hearing Nina Simone’s song “Sinnerman”: Oh sinnerman where you gonna run to … all on that day? / Well I run to the rock, please hide me … / But the rock cried out … I ain’t gonna hide you guy …”

And why should DC residents? 

Many of DC’s socio-economic ills — high unemployment, a huge foster care population, poor educational performance, unexplained violence — emanate from that crack epidemic fueled, in no small measure, by Edmond and his crime family, as described in a Washington City Paper article published in 2000. The crack-addicted children — as well as those who grew up in homes with crack-addicted parents — are now adults living in various DC neighborhoods. Many of them have never received the mental or emotional help they needed to address those traumatic experiences. Unquestionably, their trauma has been passed on to their children. 

Now, some federal prosecutor who didn’t live in DC in the 1980s — who didn’t navigate the darkness, the terror, the hopelessness and the devastation — has decided it’s a good idea to reduce Rayful Edmond’s sentence, and perhaps set him loose once again in the city among the people he nearly destroyed.

To quote Simone: Go to the devil.

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jonetta rose barras is an author, a freelance journalist and host of The Barras Report television show. She can be reached at thebarrasreport@gmail.com.