CAPITAL TRIAL OF ALLEGED DRUG KINGPIN OPENS IN D.C.

Tommy Edelin, a local rap artist accused of leading one of the District's
most violent drug organizations, went on trial yesterday in a murder
conspiracy case that could lead to the first execution of a D.C. prisoner
in more than 40 years.

Edelin sat quietly at the defense table, occasionally taking notes, as
prosecutors began outlining allegations to a jury in U.S. District Court.
They vowed to tie him to 11 killings, including the deaths of two people
they said were shot by mistake. Edelin is one of six people charged in a
93-count indictment, but he is the only one who could face the death
penalty if convicted. The others face maximum terms of life in prison.

At several points during his opening remarks, Assistant U.S. Attorney
Stephen J. Pfleger displayed photographs of Edelin on monitors stationed
throughout the courtroom. One picture showed Edelin with a handgun, another
showed him in a hot tub and another with a luxury car. Yet another showed a
recording studio that Pfleger said was built with illegal drug money. This,
Pfleger said, was the lifestyle of a ruthless drug king.

"This is a case about greed, a case about power, a case about respect --
street respect," Pfleger said, describing Edelin as a bright young man who
relied on a network of enforcers to keep his hold on the crack cocaine
trade. As head of the 1-5 Mob, Edelin decided whom to kill, Pfleger told
the jury.

Edelin, 32, has denied wrongdoing; his attorney is to address the jury today.

Before his arrest in 1998, Edelin told a television interviewer that he had
turned his life around after brushes with the law and had become a
community success story. Now he is the first defendant to stand trial in a
death penalty case in the District since 1972. The last execution in the
District took place in 1957.

Last year, then-Attorney General Janet Reno approved plans to seek capital
punishment against Edelin, heeding the recommendation of then-U.S. Attorney
Wilma A. Lewis. Although D.C. law has no provision for the death penalty,
federal law makes it an option. It took nearly six weeks to seat a jury in
the case, largely because hundreds of candidates had strong feelings
against capital punishment or couldn't serve on a four-month trial.

U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth has ordered strict security measures.
The names of jurors were not disclosed, even to the lawyers, and federal
marshals are transporting the jury to the courthouse from a secret location.

Pfleger said the government's witnesses will include numerous people who
were part of Edelin's drug organization, including his brother, Gerald, who
has been arrested as well.

Edelin's father, Earl, is among the defendants in the case. The others are
Bryan Bostick, Henry Johnson, Shelton Marbury and Marwin Mosley. Bostick
also awaits trial on federal charges in another case in which he is accused
of being a triggerman for another D.C. drug gang.

Edelin got his start in the drug business in the mid-1980s, selling cocaine
as part the Young Young Crew, Pfleger told jurors yesterday. A few years
later, when crack cocaine became a force in the city, Edelin found a New
York supplier and launched his own gang in the Stanton Dwellings public
housing complex in Southeast Washington, Pfleger said.

Much of Pfleger's two-hour presentation focused on the November 1993
killing of Maurice Doleman, 19, described as a drug rival, and the December
1993 slayings of Rodney and Volante Smith, siblings allegedly killed by
mistake. Those slayings prompted the capital charges against Edelin.
Pfleger will continue his presentation to the jury today.

Pfleger told the jury that Edelin paid a hit man with money and drugs to
kill Doleman. He said Edelin was with Bostick when Bostick opened fire on
the Smiths, who were on their way to a Christmas party at a Southeast
Washington church. Bostick thought Rodney Smith was an enemy, Pfleger said.
In fact, Smith was a 20-year-old college student who had nothing to do with
any dispute, the prosecutor said. Smith was driving his 14-year-old sister
to the party.

Numerous other innocent people were wounded by gunshots on other occasions,
Pfleger said, including an incident in which Bostick and others allegedly
opened fire on two men in a van in Suitland because it was a gold-colored
Mazda, like a vehicle owned by an enemy. It turned out to be the wrong van,
Pfleger said.

Much of the testimony in the case will involve accounts of conflicts that
Edelin's group had with other organizations, Pfleger said. One feud
subsided for a while after a meeting that was arranged in the cafeteria at
D.C. Superior Court, he said.

"They do it there . . . because of the metal detectors," Pfleger told the
jury. "It's the one place in the city they know they can go where nobody
has a gun."