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<span style="font-weight: bold"><span style="font-size: 17pt">
Jamaican Drug Lord 'Dudus' Obtains Sentencing Delay</span></span>
3:06 p.m. CDT, March 16, 2012
NEW YORK, March 16 (Reuters) - Federal prosecutors
must prove convicted Jamaican drug lord Christopher 'Dudus'
Coke's life of violence extended far beyond his admitted crimes,
a judge ruled on Friday, delaying for months the sentencing of
the gang leader.
Coke, 43, was to be sentenced on Friday in Manhattan federal
court, but the judge overseeing the case instead ordered
hearings to determine whether the government had evidence for
the additional crimes.
Although Coke pleaded guilty in August 2011 to drug
trafficking and assault charges, and agreed with prosecutors not
to seek a prison term under 21 years and 8 months, his defense
lawyers hotly contested the government's descriptions of Coke's
violent personality and lifetime of violent crime.
Coke's defense lawyers decried the "unsolicited letters of
various Jamaican nationals who wrote to the court with
allegations of gang rape, domestic slavery, and torture of women
by hot irons and being fed to crocodiles," they said in a letter
to judge Robert Patterson this week requesting the hearings.
"It is difficult to imagine how even the most temperate of
judges would not be severely inflamed against the defendant,"
the lawyers said.
Prosecutors had asked the judge to impose the maximum
23-year sentence and said their descriptions of Coke's crimes
were appropriate given his earlier guilty plea.
The hearings were scheduled to begin May 22.
Coke was arrested in Jamaica in June 2010 and later
extradited to the United States.
He was so powerful the Jamaican government declared a state
of emergency to capture him and more than 500 police officers
waged an armed assault on the barricaded Kingston neighborhood
of Tivoli Gardens that Coke controlled.
Seventy-three people were killed in the fighting before Coke
was caught.
(Reporting By Basil Katz; Editing by Daniel Trotta)
<span style="font-weight: bold"><span style="font-size: 17pt">
Jamaican Drug Lord 'Dudus' Obtains Sentencing Delay</span></span>
3:06 p.m. CDT, March 16, 2012
NEW YORK, March 16 (Reuters) - Federal prosecutors
must prove convicted Jamaican drug lord Christopher 'Dudus'
Coke's life of violence extended far beyond his admitted crimes,
a judge ruled on Friday, delaying for months the sentencing of
the gang leader.
Coke, 43, was to be sentenced on Friday in Manhattan federal
court, but the judge overseeing the case instead ordered
hearings to determine whether the government had evidence for
the additional crimes.
Although Coke pleaded guilty in August 2011 to drug
trafficking and assault charges, and agreed with prosecutors not
to seek a prison term under 21 years and 8 months, his defense
lawyers hotly contested the government's descriptions of Coke's
violent personality and lifetime of violent crime.
Coke's defense lawyers decried the "unsolicited letters of
various Jamaican nationals who wrote to the court with
allegations of gang rape, domestic slavery, and torture of women
by hot irons and being fed to crocodiles," they said in a letter
to judge Robert Patterson this week requesting the hearings.
"It is difficult to imagine how even the most temperate of
judges would not be severely inflamed against the defendant,"
the lawyers said.
Prosecutors had asked the judge to impose the maximum
23-year sentence and said their descriptions of Coke's crimes
were appropriate given his earlier guilty plea.
The hearings were scheduled to begin May 22.
Coke was arrested in Jamaica in June 2010 and later
extradited to the United States.
He was so powerful the Jamaican government declared a state
of emergency to capture him and more than 500 police officers
waged an armed assault on the barricaded Kingston neighborhood
of Tivoli Gardens that Coke controlled.
Seventy-three people were killed in the fighting before Coke
was caught.
(Reporting By Basil Katz; Editing by Daniel Trotta)
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