By Shayna Jacobs
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
MANHATTAN SUPREME COURT — The Columbia University undergrad charged with spearheading a campus narcotics distribution ring out of his fraternity house has suffered enough and should not be subjected to jail time, his lawyer argued on Tuesday.
Alleged campus cocaine dealer Harrison David, 20, has been suspended from the Ivy League school along with his four student co-defendants. He spent almost two weeks in jail because, he said, his father refused to bail him out.
And since his release on $75,000 bail, David has been sent to live in Florida with a former city Department of Correction official who's a friend of the family, to give him a "more structured environment," David's defense lawyer Matthew Myers said Tuesday.
David's father, a Boston surgeon, "is understandably livid" at the boy with near perfect SAT scores whose bright future has crumbled into dust, Myers said.
Jail time "pales in comparison to the damage that's already been done," Myers said, adding that he will ask the Office of Special Narcotics to offer David a jail-free plea deal.
David and the four other students charged in the drug ring appeared for the first time Tuesday since their Dec. 7 arrest and arraignment in Manhattan Supreme Court.
The former Ivy Leaguers, all of whom are out on bail, arrived in dark suits, clean-cut faces and groomed hairstyles — a stark contrast to the unkempt hair and grungy sweatshirts they wore at their arraignment last month following an early morning door-bust sweep of their dorms and frat houses.
Prosecutors said they spent five months on an undercover operation in which they allegedly purchased nearly $11,000 worth of marijuana, cocaine, ecstasy, Adderall and LSD from the five defendants.
Prosecutors said a grand jury will hear additional charges against some of the students based on the drugs that were allegedly recovered from their dorms and apartments during their arrests. Prosecutors have not said which of the students will be affected or what the additional charges entail.
A lawyer for philosophy student Christoper Coles, 20, said his client deserves drug treatment, not incarceration.
Coles smoked pot every day, and became such a heavy user that he had to sell pot just to finance his habit, attorney Marc Agnifilo said outside the court Tuesday. Agnifilo said Coles has sought professional help for his drug problem before his arrest and after his suspension from Columbia.
"He certainly had a drug habit and he started selling so he could afford to buy marijuana," Agnifilo said, adding that his client's "life is in total disarray."
Coles has moved back in with his parents in the DC area and is receiving his drug treatment there, Agnifilo said.
The defendants are due back in court on March 1, the same day that prosecutors could seek to file additional charges.
