Court rejects racial defense in Jersey City drug case

by Jersey Journal
Monday April 13, 2009, 4:04 AM

A man convicted of drug and weapons offenses lost a bid to get his conviction overturned by claiming the judge never told a jury that white people have a hard time identifying blacks, and vice versa.

The suspect had a problem with his appeal: The man identifying him, a Jersey City police detective, is also an African American.

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Court rejects racial defense in drug case

Monday, April 13, 2009
By MICHAELANGELO CONTE
JOURNAL STAFF WRITER

Convicted of drug and weapon offenses in June 2007, Jersey City's Barki Clark, 30, tried to get his conviction overturned by claiming the judge never told the jury that white people have a hard time identifying blacks, and vice versa.

The concept, called cross-racial identification, has merit, officials said.

But Clark, arrested in the Booker T. Washington housing complex in Nov. 2005 with 53 bags of heroin and 38 vials of cocaine after he pointed a gun in an officer's face, had a problem with his appeal: The officer he pointed the gun at, Detective Keith Armstrong, was also African American.

"While Detective Armstrong was the only witness able to identify defendant as the person involved in the transactions he observed, defendant and Detective Armstrong are of the same race," reads Friday's ruling by the Appellate Court denying the appeal filed by Barki Clark, 30.

On June 13, 2007 a jury convicted Clark on 15 of 16 counts, officials said.

A short time later Clark pleaded guilty to another drug dealing charge and was sentenced on Oct. 12, 2007. He has been in prison since then.

Juries are given instruction on cross-racial identification prior to beginning deliberation when pertinent because of the potential unreliability of such identification in stranger-on-stranger situations where there is no corroboration of the identification, Hudson County Prosecutor Edward DeFazio said.