Ravens' Lewis reports to Fla. prison camp

BALTIMORE (AP) - Baltimore Ravens running back Jamal Lewis reported to federal prison camp in Florida on Friday to serve a four-month sentence for using a cell phone to try to set up a cocaine deal, a U.S. Bureau of Prisons spokesman said.

Dan Dunne, the prisons spokesman, said Lewis reported to Federal Prison Camp, Pensacola on Saufley Field at about 11:40 a.m. "It's a facility where inmates are required to work, and it provides auxiliary work force for the military there," Dunne said. "The chief job for the inmates is grounds maintenance work."

The minimum-security facility holds up to 536 inmates, who live in three dormitories with double bunk beds. Many inmates in the facility are drug offenders. The prison is surrounded by perimeter security.

"They're required to be in their housing units at a certain time," Dunne said. "It's a very structured environment."

Each housing unit has a room where inmates can gather to watch television, Dunne said.

Don Samuel, Lewis' attorney in Atlanta, said he asked federal authorities to assign Lewis to an Alabama prison, but the request was denied because one of the defendants convicted in the same drug investigation is there and because of crowding at that facility.

Lewis was sentenced last month in Atlanta. He had pleaded guilty to trying to set up the drug deal 4 1/2 years ago, a few months after the Ravens chose him as the fifth overall pick in the 2000 draft. No drugs ever exchanged hands.

After he entered his guilty plea, the NFL suspended him for two games and he lost $761,000 in wages.

The penalty was worked out in October as part of a plea agreement in which prosecutors agreed to drop more serious drug conspiracy and attempted cocaine possession charges. After his prison term, Lewis will spend two months in a halfway house and perform 500 hours of community service.

Lewis should be able to return to the Ravens well before the start of the 2005 season. At most, he could miss the opening of training camp.

If he had been convicted of the conspiracy charge, the former star at Tennessee could have faced at least 10 years in prison, although he likely would have received a shorter sentence under federal guidelines.

Lewis won the NFL rushing title in 2003, amassing 2,066 yards - the second-highest total in NFL history.

Collier: A fumble in the Super Bowl murder

Friday, January 30, 2004
By Gene Collier, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Jacinth Baker was wearing boots and a fur hat, not that there is any particular dress code for lying dead in the predawn street on a winter's morning. Those were the cogent details regarding blood-soaked evidence.
It is not one of your traditional Super Bowl images. We prefer to freeze-frame for our memories the astonishing grace of John Stallworth pulling down a perfect Terry Bradshaw missile on the deep post, Joe Montana's laser slant pass to John Taylor, Kevin Dyson's heroically futile stretch from the victorious tackle of Mike Jones to within inches of the Rams' goal line.
But four years ago tonight, Jacinth Baker and Richard Lollar, two high school buddies from Akron, went to a post-Super Bowl party in Atlanta and wound up dead. For some, even beyond the damaged souls of their families, that's a Super Bowl memory every bit as indelible as Joe Namath's raised, wagging finger, because what happened to Baker and Lollar has never been explained, never been fully understood, never had its myriad horrifying elements fully absorbed into a grieving process that therefore can't complete itself.
The only thing easily apparent is that four years ago tonight, somebody got away with murder. "Jacinth (pronounced JAY-sinth) was 21, and he wanted to go to art school," Greg Wilson was telling me on the phone from Akron this week. "He'd spent some time in the Job Corps in New York, pursuing his art career. He'd met with some people from Marvel Comics. They told him to get back in touch with them when he finished school. His mother died before it happened. That's my sister, Susan Wilson."
So now, at the close of every January, Greg Wilson can't help but feel some additional sting from the loss of a promising kid who lived in his house like a little brother for most of his childhood.
"Jacinth was real funny," Greg said. "He loved to play around, loved to joke. He'd joke with you all day long. He'd didn't want to see anybody unhappy, to see anybody suffer, anybody go hungry. He had a beautiful personality. Took after his mother that way.
"He left here and went to Atlanta. He was supposed to be going to California for art school, but he had some family down there on his father's side. From what I understood, they were just going to a Super Bowl party in Buckhead at the Cobalt Lounge. That's where everything started."
When the Cobalt emptied around 4 a.m., there were arguments outside. A man named Jeff Gwen got into one with someone named Reginald Oakley, one of nearly a dozen people who'd arrived at the club in a 40-foot limousine hired by Baltimore Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis.
Evidence at the subsequent trial suggested that Baker joined the fray, hitting Oakley with a champagne bottle. Lewis would later say that Oakley, Joseph Sweeting and Kwame King, all members of his party, bought knives at a local sporting goods store the day before the Super Bowl. Somebody was about to use them.
Lollar and Baker were left bleeding on the concrete when Lewis' limo sped off. Baker's blood was found in the limo. One female occupant of the limo said the party stopped to dispose of Lewis' bloody shirt, but at trial, no witness ever placed a knife in Lewis' hand or said he was involved in the fight except Gwen, whose testimony was discounted because he identified Lewis as wearing a mink coat.
Several in Lewis' party wore mink that night.
Sweeting was charged with Lollar's death, Oakley with Baker's. In a three-week trial that ended with a jury deliberating less than five hours before acquitting both of them, Sweeting's lawyer told the judge the killer was King. Lewis, originally charged with two counts each of murder, felony murder and aggravated assault, pleaded guilty to misdemeanor obstruction of justice in exchange for testimony against Sweeting and Oakley.
To this day, Greg Wilson believes Ray Lewis paid for all the defense attorneys.
"If he didn't," Wilson said, "somebody would have told the truth. Where are these guys getting the kind of money that would get them off?"
Lewis was in the middle of a $26 million contract at the time. Less than six months after the stabbings, it was cold legal history. Case closed. No further investigation. Atlanta authorities contend the right men were arrested, just not convicted. At least three others in the Lewis limo were never called to the stand in three weeks of testimony.
Greg Wilson wrote a letter to the newspaper in Atlanta, saying he thought the district attorney put his nephew's case on the back burner.
"I got a letter from him," Wilson said. "He said his office would strive to do better in the next case. That pissed me off. I didn't want to hear about the next case. Nobody here has the kind of money that would keep our case alive. We're just an average family, like anyone else, just trying to make it. If you don't have money, you don't have nothin'."

My compadres who did their bits at Saufley thought it was sweet. They liked Tyndall too bit I heard it closed.

There were a lot of killings at USP Atlanta in 94 or so including two hacks and Bennie Masters booked a rat right in front of that lady BOP chief in the big hall between the 4 blocks on the way to mainline. Benny was a lifer and a bit of a bug with DWB or AB ties and whacked some snitch allegedly on Vic Arena's orders....blood spewed everywhere from a good arterial hit and the BOP lady on visit (Kathy something) surrounded by hacks ...fainted....too funny.

I think county stockades in hard urban environs can be brutal...for a peckerwood....so fluid and the tier boss system and utterly corrupt hacks...not fun.

A regimented joint with order and known rules is easier if one behaves. Think Otisville...run by NYC wiseguys...order...the goblins (i'm being polite) behave.

Problem in the Feds is if one has say an SCE tag and is only down to less than a 5 spot (a short timer in the Feds as you know)..well if you have a thick jacket you will never see a FPC....or even a low. You'll have to tune down from a USP (always rough) to a decent FCI but say you're down to 18 months waiting and praying for halfway house and the average sentence in your joint is 15-20 years. Then you have to be damned choosy who yer pals are and you might have to lick yer nuts at times or you can go bug all for honour and all and pick up a life bit for killing some fool. Tommy Silverstein started out with a 10 year old old law (one third) bit and started killing folks and now he's a total bug locked away underground with no human contact and just some pencils to draw with...and the hacks would love to kill him but I doubt anyone wants him one on one...lol

And that's just the Feds....think about being a white guy at Raway or Joliet....ugh.

I'm glad it sounds like you're reconstructing well. Best of luck. The joint really hurts those who have a life elsewhere and I know you do. For those with no life, hell...they thrive inside.

That's why most FReepers will never understand why killers don't sit in the joint feeling all bad about the crime that got them their RUD bit....but they do fear the Chair, Gurney or Chamber....usually.

Ray Lewis Not Invited To Neighbor's Super Bowl Party - Again

Ray Lewis was not invited to his neighbor's Super Bowl party again this year, it was reported today. Joe Connell, Lewis's next-door neighbor in the Baltimore suburb of Owings Mills, has left the Baltimore Raven off of his invitee list each year since the linebacker was involved in a brutal double murder outside of a 2000 Super Bowl party in Atlanta.

"I just don't think it's a good idea to have him there," said Connell. "He's got a little bit of a poor track record when it comes to Super Bowl parties, you know? I mean no disrespect, but I very much value the safety of my guests."

Even though he is not a Baltimore Ravens fan, Connell said he was overjoyed when Lewis and the Ravens made the Super Bowl in 2001, meaning he didn't have to deal with the awkwardness of not extending Lewis an invitation to his annual party. "If I had my druthers, they would make the Super Bowl every year. I'd prefer to avoid the whole invitation ordeal and not have that guy on my bad side."

Lewis said he realized he had not been invited again when he learned that other neighbors had received invitations from Connell more than a week ago.

"I think it's kind of rude that I'm never invited," said Lewis. "I mean, I plea-bargained out of that whole thing. I turned on my friends and got set free, so cut me a break already. What are the chances that someone would go and get themselves killed again at another Super Bowl party I'm at? Probably not all that good, as long as no one would piss me off."

- Sports Pickle.com

I read a lot.

USP=United States Penitentiary....graduate gladiator school...intelligent psychopaths....at least before crack dealing went Federal

FPC=Federal Prison Camp....soft as butter

BOP=Bureau of Prisons (Federal, part of Justice Department and quite separate from the judiciary)

AB= Aryan Brotherhood....pound for pound, the most dangerous and reckless gang in the Feds. Used to be 100% killers. They exist primarily to run dope in the joint and to protect themselves from the huge mass of black predators. They are not terribly ideological despite their name. I doubt most could spell Christian Identity but they do know what the Turner Diaries are....Armored Car machine gun robber types...natural predators of the blanc variety. I read they have been diluted somewhat and are not the force they once were back in the 80s to early 90s. Also strong in Kali state system. (the Mex gangs are the largest and most cohesive nowadays)

DWB= Dirty White Boys....a lite white gang but on occasion dangerous....especially in the Southeast region and who also exist for self preservation.

SCE= Sophisticated Criminal Enterprise.....reserved for Mob guys and large scale drug smugglers or spies and whatnot. You get that tag on your jacket (files) and you will never see a facility less than a medium security unless you make a deal....which carries it's own risks..lol

FCI= Federal Correctional Institute....next step down from a USP and can range from Low security to High (but not max) security. Most are medium to high level security. One can survive ok in an FCI if one is smart and minds one's own business and stays out of jailhouse traps. Killings and sexual assaults happen but at low frequency compared to a USP. Low security FCIs are soft....next step before going to a camp....many of which have no fence or controlled movement.

RUD....Removal Upon Death....a Life Sentence in the Feds since the 1987 Sentencing Guidelines means Life....there is no parole in the Feds. Anything less than Life and more than a year gets 54 days goodtime per year. It means that if you are perfect you will still do around 87% of your sentence.....unless you are foreign and on occasion they will deport you there to do your time which is patently unfair to US citizens.

I hope this was helpful. The best book I ever saw on US Penitentiaries was called Hothouse...about USP Leavenworth in the 80s.

Regards

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