The Vista Hotel Sting was the arrest of Washington's mayor, Marion Barry, in a seventh-floor room of the Vista International Hotel at 1400 M Street NW, on Thomas Circle, on the evening of 18 January 1990. The FBI and the city's police had set it up with Hazel Diane Moore, known as Rasheeda, a former model and former girlfriend of Barry's who was cooperating with them. Hidden cameras recorded nearly an hour in the room: Barry drank, pressed her for sex, which she refused, and smoked crack cocaine the sting had supplied before agents came through the door. His angry words as they did so, blaming her for setting him up, became notorious.
Barry, in his third term, was indicted on fourteen counts, including perjury and drug possession. The trial, before Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson, ended on 10 August 1990 with a single conviction for misdemeanor possession, and that count concerned a different incident, in November 1989. On the videotaped Vista charge the jury could not agree. He was sentenced to six months, served them in 1991 and 1992, and was elected mayor again in 1994, taking office for a fourth term in January 1995.
The hotel later became a Wyndham and is now the Westin Washington, D.C. City Center.
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38.9053, -77.0334
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