Bloods trial opens with focus on witnesses

NORFOLK

Defense attorneys Monday challenged the government's case against two accused leaders of the Bounty Hunter Bloods, saying during their opening arguments in federal court that witnesses will be lying and the evidence will be thin.

"This case is based on the credibility of the witnesses," said Virginia Beach attorney Lawrence H. Woodward Jr., who represents Mikal Mustafa Mix, one of the suspected leaders of the Norfolk Bounty Hunter Bloods.

"You've got to not only listen to the song," Woodward told the jury during his opening statements, "you've got to listen to the singer."

Mix and codefendant Gary Toliver Jr. face dozens of counts of racketeering, assault, kidnapping, drug dealing, illegal firearms possession and being accessories to murder. They face as much as life in prison if convicted.

A third defendant, Elizabeth Horne, faces kidnapping and maiming charges related to one home-invasion robbery that the indictment alleges was led by Toliver.

Federal prosecutors said the gang operated in parts of Ocean View, Little Creek and Norview for about the last nine years.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Muhr told the jury that Mix controlled Ocean View while Toliver had Norview. Together, they ruled by guns and violence and supported themselves through drug dealing, according to prosecutors.

"You are going to learn about the Bounty Hunter Bloods, a particularly violent street gang," Muhr told the jury.

He said leaders often recruited teenagers and sometimes boys as young as 8 and 9. To join, the boys allegedly would have to withstand a 31-second beating, known as a "shoot a 31." Girls in the gang, called rubies, allegedly were forced to have sex with male gang members in order to join.

Muhr ran through a litany of assaults and shootings linked to the gang since 2004. He said the gang was started here in 1999 by Mix and another man, both of whom moved here from New York.

Muhr said the case is "about power. It's about a quest for money. It's about respect."

Mix and Toliver are accused of being accessories after the fact to a July 27, 2007, mob attack in East Ocean View that left 19-year-old James S. Robertson dead.

But Woodward and Toliver's attorney, Rebecca Colaw, said the government has little direct evidence linking the two men to that attack, other assaults, shootings or drug dealing.

The evidence, they said, hinges on testimony of accomplices who cut deals with prosecutors.

"The individuals who are testifying are testifying out of a sense of revenge," Colaw told the jury.

In a related case, state prosecutors dropped murder charges Monday against two teenagers accused of participating in the East Ocean View mob beating.

Nichelle Carter and Ieshia Rountree were released from Hampton Roads Regional Jail on Monday, but are expected to be brought back into custody Wednesday after a grand jury rehears the 10 original felony counts against them, plus an additional count of lynching by mob, said Amanda Howie, a spokeswoman for the Norfolk commonwealth attorney's office.

Staff writer Meghan Hoyer contributed to this report.

Tim McGlone, (757) 446-2343, tim.mcglone@pilotonline.com