LITTLE ROCK — A Helena-West Helena man who let two drug kingpins use his house to store firearms and sell crack cocaine was sentenced to 11 years in federal prison Tuesday.
Russell “Juicy” Taylor, 39, was ordered by U.S. District Judge James M. Moody to serve the 132-month sentence followed by two years of supervised release for allowing Sedrick Trice and Leon Edwards to use his house at 214 Jane St. in Helena-West Helena to prepare and distribute crack, powder cocaine and marijuana.
Taylor, who pleaded guilty in April to a charge of maintaining a drug-involved premises, also let Trice store guns — including an AK-47-style rifle — at the house, which the dealers and their customers referred to as “Jane Street,” according to federal court papers.
During his hearing at the federal courthouse in Little Rock, Taylor stood dressed in a blue jail jumpsuit and shackled at the ankles as he told Moody he regretted being involved in the drug trade.
“I apologize to you, Ms. Peters and the United States for wasting your time,” he said, referring to Moody and Assistant U.S. Attorney Julie Peters.
The apology came before Moody imposed the prison time, making Taylor the 20th defendant to be sentenced in connection with an FBI-led public corruption and drugtrafficking sting that culminated last October with the arrest of about 70 people.
Among those arrested in the investigation dubbed Operation Delta Blues were Trice, Edwards and five Helena-West Helena area lawmen. Trice and Edwards are now serving prison sentences of 40 years and 22 years respectively for leading the multistate drug ring that distributed hundreds of pounds of cocaine and marijuana.
Four of the officers also have since been sentenced to prison. The fifth, Helena-West Helena Lt. Marlene Kalb, is set to be tried in December.
During Tuesday’s hearing, Moody acknowledged that although Taylor played a smaller role than other defendants in the drug ring, his two previous drug convictions in Mississippi meant he should be sentenced to a longer time in prison than originally estimated in his plea agreement.
In 2007, Taylor was convicted in two separate cases of selling cocaine in Marshall County, Miss., according to the Mississippi Department of Corrections. Taylor served about2 1/2 of a 10-year prison term in Mississippi before being paroled in January 2010.
The convictions weren’t included in Taylor’s plea agreement with federal prosecutors but were included in his presentence report that Moody used to calculate a sentencing range.
Without the convictions, federal sentencing guidelines recommended a prison sentence of 84-105 months for Taylor. The convictions bumped the recommended sentence to 151-188 months, Moody said.
In response, Taylor’s attorney, Patrick Benca, and Peters asked that the judge impose a prison sentence below the higher range.
Benca conceded that his client qualified as a career offender — noting he was on parole at the time federal agents arrested him — but argued that Moody should impose a sentence below the guidelines because his client’s role in the drug conspiracy was much smaller than his co-defendants’.
In his plea agreement, Taylor took responsibility for the distribution of about 2 ounces of crack cocaine and about 1.1 pounds of powder cocaine because those were the amounts federal authorities say Trice and Edwards dealt from Taylor’s house.
Taylor purchased much smaller quantities of drugs for personal use, according to his plea agreement.
“His conduct in this particular indictment was minimal in comparison to the others involved,” Benca said, adding, “I know that some of the officers that were involved in this socalled Delta Blues are getting somewhat lighter sentences compared to their conduct.”
Benca referred to the four former Helena-West Helena police officers who have pleaded guilty and been sentenced to federal prison. Three of them — Herman Eaton, Robert Rogers and Robert Wahls — were sentenced to two years or less in prison after pleading guilty to accepting money to escort a person they believed was transporting drugs. Instead, the person was an FBI informant.
In her remarks, Peters argued that Moody shouldn’t consider the officers’ offenses on the same plane as Taylor’s.
None of the officers had criminal histories, and all received sentences within the guideline range for the crimes they committed, she said.
“Dean Jackson, who was possibly the worst of the officers, did get a sentence that was in keeping with the other drug offenders,” she said.
Jackson, a former Phillips County sheriff’s deputy, was sentenced in June to 80 months in prison after he admitted to taking bribes to protect Trice’s drug-trafficking.
In particular, Jackson admitted that he intervened on Trice’s behalf with other law enforcement officers, got rid of at least one of Trice’s warrants and warned the drug trafficker when authorities were about to arrest someone at the auto shop where the drug ring was based.
Peters said Taylor’s conduct was “very serious,” but she asked that Moody impose a sentence in the middle of the two recommendations, a range of 105 months to 151 months.
She said Moody should consider the other defendants in the Delta Blues case as well as the justice system in Phillips County.
Because both of Taylor’s drug convictions were in Marshall County, Miss., “when he’s been arrested, he’s been convicted,” Peters said.
But that’s not been the case with other defendants who were arrested in Phillips County, she said.
Several of Taylor’s co-defendants were arrested numerous times over the past two decades in Phillips County but few were convicted.
The pattern was highlighted in an Arkansas Democrat-Gazette investigation published last spring. The newspaper found that the Phillips County justice system allowed cases — including several involving the Delta Blues defendants — to linger for years in circuit court, only to be dropped or dismissed because too much time had passed for prosecutors to try them.
Since the newspaper published the first parts of its investigation, prosecutors in Phillips County have dropped more than 200 cases because fugitive warrants hadn’t been served in a timely manner. Delta Blues defendants were among those cases as well.
During the hearing, Peters said imposing the higher “career offender” sentence on Taylor “is harsh” when compared to the other defendants.
“If many of the people had been convicted of those offenses, they might have also been career offenders,” she said.
Arkansas, Pages 9 on 09/26/2012