Tavon White says pleading guilty to running a racketeering enterprise at the Baltimore City Detention Center was an easy decision. Deciding to testify against his alleged co-conspirators, no sweat.
Telling his granny about it? That was tough.
Defense attorneys on Thursday played a tape from the Howard County Detention Center last month of White, his voice quavering, explaining to his grandmother that he was being forced to cooperate with the government. Under questioning, White said it wasn't true that he was testifying against his will.
"It was hard to come out and say, 'Granny, I'm cooperating,'" White told defense attorney Michael Montemarano.
The jail call was one of many manuevers by defense attorneys Thursday as they sought to discredit the former Black Guerrilla Family leader's testimony by portraying him as a criminal who will say anything to improve his situation.
White's guilty plea calls for him to serve 20 years combined for the federal jail case and an unrelated attempted murder. Two inmates and six jail officers or staff are on trial, the last of the 44 people charged in the case.
Thursday's testimony revealed that White quickly became a witness for the government after his indictment in April 2013, meeting with prosecutors twice in the month after his conviction, and at least seven times overall. He was given immunity, according to the attorneys.
He also testified in front of a grand jury that handed up the second wave of indictments in the far-reaching corruption scandal at the jail.
"Yes," he said.
"Fair to say you're a drug dealer?" the attorney asked.
"I was," White replied.
"Fair to say you're a killer?"
White, who was convicted of second-degree murder in the 1990s, paused for several seconds.
"I don't know," he said.
White said he had become a gang member while incarcerated in the 1990s, but after his release did not recognize the gang. But when he returned to jail in 2009, he was recognized as a senior authority and was given control of the jail over several higher-ranking members being held there.
Despite that nod of respect, White testified that he didn't think much of the gang.
"You had no interest in the code, the beliefs?" Sussman asked.
"At heart, no," White responded.
Asked if he didn't take part in the gang during the time he was on the streets because he "didn't need them," White responded, "Correct."
White has testified that becoming a leader was important so that he didn't have to follow orders from others, and he quickly began impressing on the gang that there were missed opportunities to make money through contraband smuggling. Montemarano quoted White from a recorded call in which he boasted he had "never been a [expletive] followers a day in your life."
The defense has repeatedly pushed the idea that jail administrators approved the drug-dealing, extortion and sex taking place throughout the facility, under the idea that the alleged acts wouldn't have been committed in furtherance of the gang if they were simply part of the culture of the institution. White was repeatedly pressed on whether the jail's former security chief gave him permission to run the gang's operations, but he offered little.
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"She had an idea what was going on, yes," White told attorney David R. Solomon. "I don't know what she knew, but she mentioned things as if she heard things. I don't know what she knew though."
He denied that he had any private meetings or access to the security chief regarding her approval of contraband smuggling in exchange for containing violence. White said he was asked to keep violence in check, but said it was never an explicit quid pro quo.
During the cross-examination, White carefully parsed defense attorney's questions and avoided being tripped up.
Sussman asked White if he realized following the indictment that he was in serious trouble, and said it seemed like it only took him about 15 to 20 minutes to decide to cooperate. White said Sussman was incorrect.
"It took me maybe a minute to realize that," White said.
jfenton@baltsun.com