UNEASY DEATH-PENALTY TRIAL IN WASHINGTON

WASHINGTON, May 22 -- In the relentless national agenda that envelopes this
city, the trial of Tommy Edelin, the accused principal in 11 local drug-war
murders, is an unremarkable event barely noticed, except that his life is
at stake.

Mr. Edelin, a 32-year-old grammar-school dropout, is facing the death
penalty in a city that voted 2 to 1 against imposing capital punishment in
1992 and that last executed a convict 44 years ago. The city's vote does
not apply because the trial is in federal court.

For critics, the trial, in which federal prosecutors felt obliged to seek
the death penalty, amounts to a grim footnote in the age-old complaint by
residents of the District of Columbia about the lack of home rule.

"Out of respect for the law in this local jurisdiction, we believe the
death penalty should not be applied here," Eleanor Holmes Norton, the
district's nonvoting delegate to Congress, declared in a letter last month
requesting that Attorney General John Ashcroft reverse the decision by his
predecessor, Janet Reno, to seek the death penalty.

One measure of the district's chafing under federal oversight might be the
fact that the jury selection for this trial, normally a matter of a week or
less, took six weeks. More than 350 potential jurors had to be excused,
with about half expressing opposition to the death penalty.

Others begged off at the prospect of a four-month trial in which they would
have to endure tight security precautions. A lead witness from the drug
world testified that Mr. Edelin had, in fighting previous convictions,
threatened to shoot people.

Grand Guignol violence is too often the routine in this city bedeviled by
drug-gang warfare. But this case included the murder of two passers-by,
leading federal authorities, who run the district's felony courts, to seek
death for Mr. Edelin, the first capital punishment case here in 29 years.

Mr. Edelin sits alone in this respect in the courthouse, across from the
Mall where tourists come and go, oblivious to his case. There are five
other defendants, including Mr. Edelin's father, Earl. But Tommy Edelin,
accused of an unrepentant "leadership role" in a decade of street killing,
is the only one facing death.

The trial opened earlier this month under the gavel of Judge Royce C.
Lamberth of Federal District Court, in the same courthouse that was
surrounded by TV dish antennas and frenzied news crews through the
scandal-hungry months of grand-jury inquiry that led up to the impeachment
of President Bill Clinton.

This case is in pedestrian counter-point, yet far deadlier in its facts.
There is no news media stakeout when the jury makes its daily journey to
and from a secret site accompanied by federal marshals. Jurors' identities
are being kept a tight secret, even from the trial lawyers.

By midafternoon on a recent day in the trial, steeped in the argot and
posturings of drug dealers, a drowsiness hung in the air as a witness
recited the homicidal deeds charged to a gang known as the 1-5 Mob.

But Mr. Edelin remained the model of alertness. He is accused of being the
leader of the gang and is a self-confident city survivor who portrays
himself as a reformed crack dealer turned hopeful rap star.

"I love him so much," the witness, Eric Jones, a turncoat member of the 1-5
Mob, gently admitted as the accused listened with an unappreciative stare.
At the prosecutor's lead, Mr. Jones, an admitted cocaine dealer, traversed
the web of a 93-count indictment that put Mr. Edelin at the center of the
11 killings and related criminal activities in the drug marts of Southeast
Washington.

Drug-gang feuding on the streets in this part of the district became so
intense, the prosecution said, that a peace meeting was once arranged for
the cafeteria of a local courthouse that had metal detectors. "It's the one
place in the city they know they can go where nobody has a gun," Assistant
United States Attorney Stephen J. Pfleger told the jury.

In a 10-foot-wide chart labeled "Violence Summary, U.S. v. Tommy Edelin et
al.," the government offers life snippets and photographs of the victims;
smiling in pictures from student days were 20-year-old Rodney Smith and his
sister, Volante, 14, who were killed in what was called a case of mistaken
identity by a gunman from the 1-5 Mob.

Mr. Edelin is not accused of personally shooting the victims but of
ordering the killings, including two from jail. He has denied the charges.
Prosecutors say Mr. Edelin directed the shootings as part of a "continuing
criminal conspiracy," a charge that permits the death penalty.

His lawyer, James Rudasill, appointed by the court, insisted that Mr.
Edelin had been "trying to build a life" as a survivor -- not the leader --
of the violence-plagued housing projects around 15th Street Southeast. The
defense maintains Mr. Edelin is a scapegoat for drug-dealer witnesses who
have cut plea deals.

But his impoverished neighborhood was ruinously victimized by the gang,
according to the prosecution. Earl Edelin, the father, once ran an antidrug
program in the local youth center yet also, the prosecution said, helped
run the nearby drug mart. The level of intrigue described by witnesses
extends to what some said was Tommy's one-time suspicion that his father
was an informer who might have to be assassinated.

Intimations of Shakespeare, though, seem drowned out in court by the
mundane scale of the personalities and concerns of the drug culture. Mr.
Pfleger summarized the prosecution's case as one about the most visceral
sort of greed, power and "respect -- street respect."

Mr. Jones echoed this point in more rueful testimony against Tommy Edelin:
"People looked up to him more than they looked up to me."

Mr. Edelin, his life on the line, paid close attention.