OFFICERS IN CORRUPTION CASE GUILTY OF GUN, DRUG CHARGES

Federal Convictions Could Keep Former Partners in Jail For Life

Detectives William A. King and Antonio L. Murray tried to explain it
all. Their names surfaced in the infamous Stop Snitching video because
they said drug peddlers feared them. They stole cocaine and heroin to
give to informants because they said their training endorsed it. Their
own police department abandoned them because, they said, commanders
dare not admit that cracking the drug trade means breaking the rules.

Yesterday, a jury in U.S. District Court in Baltimore rejected every
one of those explanations and convicted the Baltimore police officers
of acting no better than the drug dealers they were sworn to arrest.
Convicted on federal charges of carrying a gun during multiple
robberies and conspiracy to sell drugs, King and Murray could spend
the rest of their lives in prison. The guilty verdicts for running a
renegade drug operation were an extraordinary turn of fate for King,
the son of a police officer, and Murray, who had been shot in the line
of duty and returned to uniform only to face a slew of public
corruption charges.

Their superiors once viewed King and Murray, both 35, as a well-oiled
team, selecting them to root out drugs in the department's new public
housing unit. Jurors decided they were also ruthless partners in
crime. "They had an opportunity to accept responsibility for what they
had done," said Maryland U.S. Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein, whose office
shepherded the FBI investigation and brought the case to trial. "But
they didn't want to. They took the stand, and the jury very
resoundingly rejected them and didn't believe them."

In a packed but somber courtroom, King was found guilty on all but one
of the charges in the 33-count indictment against him. Jurors found
Murray, who played a less prominent role in the conspiracy, guilty on
all but two of the 15 counts he faced in the indictment.

The officers' families waited four days for the verdict, and many
members wept silently when it arrived. Afterward, they declined to
comment about the case. U.S. District Judge J. Frederick Motz ordered
that the jury of eight women and four men be escorted out of the
courthouse to ensure their privacy and anonymity. King's attorney,
Edward Smith Jr., did not attend the reading of the jury's verdict at
11:45 a.m. Murray's lawyer did, saying that the conviction sadly
demonstrated the need for better training and better leadership in the
Police Department.

"They didn't have the right supervision or enough resources," attorney
Russell A. Neverdon Sr. said. "But the department has also allowed a
lot of officers to bend the rules. It doesn't make sense that my
client has to pay the price."

Neverdon said he expects to appeal the jury's decision. He pointed to
the judge's decisions to bar the Stop Snitching DVD from evidence and
to keep former police Commissioner Edward T. Norris from testifying
about rumors he had heard of officers who had skirted departmental
rules. The convictions come at a difficult time for the city's Police
Department. Last week, an officer was arrested on charges that he took
bribes from a suspect in return for agreeing not to show up at the
man's criminal trial. In May, three Southwestern District "flex squad"
officers are scheduled to be tried on rape charges. Police documents
accuse squad members of crimes similar to those committed by King and
Murray, including stealing from suspects in custody.

Police Commissioner Leonard D. Hamm declined through a spokesman to
comment on yesterday's verdict, saying he would wait until after the
officers' sentencing, scheduled for May 31.

During the trial, federal prosecutors took care to isolate King and
Murray's misdeeds from the rest of the department, whose members they
described as honorable. "The actions of King and Murray are an insult
to decent police officers in Baltimore City and everywhere," Assistant
U.S. Attorney Charles Peters told jurors in his closing arguments Tuesday.

Relying on hours of secretly recorded conversations of the officers,
federal prosecutors spent almost three weeks presenting evidence that
the officers robbed drug addicts in West Baltimore to reward their
sources on the street and line their own pockets.

Prosecutors sought to show that King and Murray abused the tools of
their trade - department badges, unmarked cars and department-issue
guns - by stealing drugs and money, distributing heroin, cocaine and
marijuana to their informants and sharing in the proceeds when the
drugs were sold. Police officials said earlier that the officers'
names were mentioned on Stop Snitching because they were in
partnership with drug informants and profited from the
relationship.

The detectives countered that they manipulated their drug-addicted
sources into thinking they were working on joint drug deals, all in an
effort to collect information about some of the city's most powerful
drug dealers. Defense attorneys described the officers as scapegoats
inside a department that had been buffeted by the changing policies of
several police commissioners in recent years.

Taking the case to trial posed an enormous risk for King and Murray.
They rejected an earlier plea deal with prosecutors, prompting
additional charges to be filed by the government.

In a rare move, King and Murray each took the witness stand in his own
defense. But their expansive accounts of unorthodox police tactics
went largely uncorroborated by other witnesses. Experts testifying for
the prosecution described King and Murray's techniques as a violation
of department rules, if not crimes.

Now the former partners face dismissal from the department and
hundreds of years in prison.

On the 13 gun possession charges alone, federal law requires that King
receive a mandatory minimum prison sentence of 305 years, according to
prosecutors' calculations. They expect Murray to face no less than 130
years in prison for his six gun-related convictions.