Posted on 02/25/2005 12:43:14 PM PST by SmithL
Count Richard Jones Jr. as one of those guys who just can't win for losing.
Eighteen months ago, Jones won an appeal of his federal drug conviction. On Thursday, he racked up a 35-year prison term - twice the sentence he received before his appeal.
His attorney, James W. Bell, contends the five-time convicted felon is being punished for his appellate good fortunate.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Mike Winck counters that Jones is paying the price he should have paid back in 2000, when the FBI first nabbed him.
"The defendant in this case, as the jury's verdict reflects, was involved in a large-scale, longtime drug operation in Knoxville," Winck told U.S. District Court Judge Tom Varlan.
"He was trafficking kilogram quantities of cocaine," Winck said. "He was using firearms. He was supervising other people, including young men he recruited. This was a serious offense committed by an individual who has had many chances to change his lifestyle. Instead, he brought his lifestyle from Ohio to East Tennessee."
Jones, 52, has a long history of crime in his native Ohio, dating back to 1974 when he was convicted of first-degree manslaughter.
In mid-1998, he moved to Knoxville, bringing with him two young men. According to testimony in a trial late last year, Jones set the men up in a house in East Knoxville, armed them with guns and gave them a steady supply of crack to hawk.
Jones earned the bulk of the profits, testimony showed.
The operation continued until August 2000 when local police and the FBI raided Jones' house. Jones agreed to cooperate and gave a confession to FBI agent Steven Fisher, testimony showed.
In August 2001, Jones, who had pleaded guilty to cocaine and gun possession charges, was sentenced to 17 years and six months behind bars. He was allowed, however, to appeal the legality of the raid of his house.
In July 2003, Jones won the appeal, and the case was sent back to federal court here.
By then, however, some things had changed in the case.
The two young men Jones brought with him from Ohio had laid bare to the FBI details of what they contended was high-flying recruitment by Jones. They said Jones took them on a chartered yacht complete with wine and women and enticed them into the drug trade.
Some high-profile cocaine suppliers in Knoxville had themselves wound up in federal hot water and agreed to testify about supplying Jones with the illegal drug.
Winck sought and won from a federal grand jury a seven-count indictment against Jones, alleging he was a dangerous mastermind of a drug trafficking conspiracy.
In November, a jury convicted Jones of six of those seven charges.
At Thursday's hearing, neither Bell nor Jones made statements on the convicted trafficker's behalf. Bell said he would "stand on" a memorandum he filed in which he wrote that Jones was being punished for winning his appeal.
Bell also has signaled that he will appeal this latest series of convictions.
He'll have to toss lots of salad before he gets out....heh heh.
A few more good decisions like this should help clear some appeal court dockets...
Goofball continues to appeal, he's gouing to end up on death row
I never heard of such a thing????
I didn't know that they could do this???
Don't you know this has a right to keep and bear drugs!! (/sarcasm)
Think about it this way, a person is convicted of killing someone based on the testimony of a witness that should have been thrown out, the accused is convicted of manslaughter. The murderer appeals the case based on that tainted evidence, and an appeals court sends the case back to a lower court for retrial without the testimony from the witness. However in the mean time, the prosecution finds the gun, a video of the murder, and an unimpeachable witness saying that the accused planned the murder for weeks. The prosecution can now use this to seek first degree murder charges, something that they could not have done if the appeal by the defendant were not successful.
It sounds like the original charge was dismissed based on the search being illegal, however the government had dug up lots of new evidence in the meantime to show he was a much bigger player in drug trafficing than they could prove back when he was originally conviceted.
It sounds like these were different charges. It's also likely he would have faced them regardless of if he appealed his first conviction or not.
So he lost the legal lottery?
More insanity from Rockefeller Drug laws!
How dare the government tell the public they cannot deal or smoke Crak in the privacy of their own Crak Houses! - huge sarcasm
You spell too well for a pro-drug Lib-berteen
Mr. Jones, I have some great news. I saved a ton of money on my car insurance.
Huh? What went wrong with the what?..........
Cool, from 17 years to 35 years to 70 years maybe???
Probably neither. There would be issues of double jeapordy only if the conviction was reversed because of either insufficient evidence or gross prosecutorial misconduct. If it was simple error at the trial court level that caused the reversal, there should be no problem with a new trial on the old charges.
The judge is free to sentence him based upon the conviction, without reference to the earlier results which were set aside by the appelate court. (Setting aside, for purposes of this discussion, the whole issue of sentencing guidelines.)
Thanks for the info.
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