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New York Times, May 22, 2012
Ex-Adviser to Jamaican Drug Lord Is Helping Build Case Against Him
By BENJAMIN WEISER
A former longtime senior adviser to Christopher M. Coke, the Jamaican drug lord who pleaded guilty last year to federal conspiracy charges in Manhattan, has been cooperating with the authorities to help build the criminal case against his former boss, a new court filing shows.
The former adviser, identified only as John Doe in the filing, had been a bodyguard and close aide to Mr. Coke’s father, Jim Brown; his tenure began in the 1980s, when Mr. Brown ran what prosecutors say was the Jamaican criminal organization that his son, Mr. Coke, eventually took over.
“Over time, I became, in essence, a trusted senior counselor to the organization,” the former adviser said in a 26-page statement filed Monday evening in Federal District Court in Manhattan.
The organization, called the Shower Posse, was based in Tivoli Gardens, a garrison community in Kingston, and it became involved in murder, extortion, armed robbery, and narcotics and firearms trafficking, the former adviser wrote.
In 2010, Mr. Coke was extradited after a monthlong manhunt in Jamaica that left more than 70 people dead. When he pleaded guilty last August, he admitted he had led the organization, which he said had distributed crack cocaine and other drugs in Jamaica and the United States, including in the Bronx.
The government’s disclosure that it had obtained the cooperation of two insider witnesses came on the eve of a court hearing Tuesday at which prosecutors are expected to present their case that Mr. Coke, 43, should receive the maximum sentence possible, 23 years.
Mr. Coke has written to the judge, asking for leniency; and his lawyers have made it clear in court papers that they planned to attack the government’s depiction of their client, as they put it, “as a murderous scoundrel, whose evil knows no bounds.”
The judge, Robert P. Patterson Jr., called the hearing after prosecutors said they wanted to introduce evidence against Mr. Coke that went beyond the crimes for which he was convicted. Mr. Coke, for example, admitted in his plea to conspiring in a single assault, of one man who owed a drug debt.
The witness is one of two former members of Mr. Coke’s group who are described as having assisted in the investigation of the trafficker by the Drug Enforcement Administration and the United States attorney’s office in Manhattan.
The office of Preet Bharara, the Manhattan United States attorney, indicated in the filing that it did not plan to call the former counselor to testify at the hearing; rather, his written statement would be used to bolster the government’s case.
But the office said it did plan to call another former high-level member of Mr. Coke’s organization, who it said was also cooperating. “That witness is expected to describe, among other things, brutal murders, beatings and other acts of violence that were committed by Coke or at his direction,” prosecutors wrote. This witness is not named in the filing, but would presumably be identified after taking the stand.
This witness, prosecutors said, would also detail how Mr. Coke armed his crew of loyal “soldiers,” which sometimes numbered more than 200, with guns that he illegally imported from the United States, and how he used women from Tivoli Gardens to smuggle cocaine into the United States.
It is the former counselor to Mr. Coke, though, who appears to have had the longest and closest relationship to the defendant, who took over his father’s organization in the early 1990s, prosecutors said.
In 1992, for example, Mr. Coke, also known as Duddus, told the adviser that he needed to obtain more high-powered weapons in order to have more power, both within the group and in Jamaica.
“The older members of the organization needed to understand that he [Duddus] would be running the organization now,” the witness wrote.
The witness said Mr. Coke’s crew included teenagers as young as 14, who ran errands or acted as lookouts until they were old enough to be given weapons. The witness also described Mr. Coke’s brutal code of discipline, and how he once ordered his men to shoot as many people as possible on a street associated with a suspected informer. “I later learned that four or five people were shot,” including two women, the witness wrote.
In smuggling arms into Jamaica from the United States, Mr. Coke's group packaged firearms inside refrigerators and other appliances, and handguns and ammunition inside food shipments, like rice and flour, the witness said.
The witness admitted in his statement that he had been involved in cocaine trafficking for more than a decade, and that at times he had lied to the American authorities. He said he eventually pleaded guilty to conspiracy, and received a long prison term.
The witness said he hoped that his cooperation would lead to his being given a new sentence of time served.
Ex-Adviser to Jamaican Drug Lord Is Helping Build Case Against Him
By BENJAMIN WEISER
A former longtime senior adviser to Christopher M. Coke, the Jamaican drug lord who pleaded guilty last year to federal conspiracy charges in Manhattan, has been cooperating with the authorities to help build the criminal case against his former boss, a new court filing shows.
The former adviser, identified only as John Doe in the filing, had been a bodyguard and close aide to Mr. Coke’s father, Jim Brown; his tenure began in the 1980s, when Mr. Brown ran what prosecutors say was the Jamaican criminal organization that his son, Mr. Coke, eventually took over.
“Over time, I became, in essence, a trusted senior counselor to the organization,” the former adviser said in a 26-page statement filed Monday evening in Federal District Court in Manhattan.
The organization, called the Shower Posse, was based in Tivoli Gardens, a garrison community in Kingston, and it became involved in murder, extortion, armed robbery, and narcotics and firearms trafficking, the former adviser wrote.
In 2010, Mr. Coke was extradited after a monthlong manhunt in Jamaica that left more than 70 people dead. When he pleaded guilty last August, he admitted he had led the organization, which he said had distributed crack cocaine and other drugs in Jamaica and the United States, including in the Bronx.
The government’s disclosure that it had obtained the cooperation of two insider witnesses came on the eve of a court hearing Tuesday at which prosecutors are expected to present their case that Mr. Coke, 43, should receive the maximum sentence possible, 23 years.
Mr. Coke has written to the judge, asking for leniency; and his lawyers have made it clear in court papers that they planned to attack the government’s depiction of their client, as they put it, “as a murderous scoundrel, whose evil knows no bounds.”
The judge, Robert P. Patterson Jr., called the hearing after prosecutors said they wanted to introduce evidence against Mr. Coke that went beyond the crimes for which he was convicted. Mr. Coke, for example, admitted in his plea to conspiring in a single assault, of one man who owed a drug debt.
The witness is one of two former members of Mr. Coke’s group who are described as having assisted in the investigation of the trafficker by the Drug Enforcement Administration and the United States attorney’s office in Manhattan.
The office of Preet Bharara, the Manhattan United States attorney, indicated in the filing that it did not plan to call the former counselor to testify at the hearing; rather, his written statement would be used to bolster the government’s case.
But the office said it did plan to call another former high-level member of Mr. Coke’s organization, who it said was also cooperating. “That witness is expected to describe, among other things, brutal murders, beatings and other acts of violence that were committed by Coke or at his direction,” prosecutors wrote. This witness is not named in the filing, but would presumably be identified after taking the stand.
This witness, prosecutors said, would also detail how Mr. Coke armed his crew of loyal “soldiers,” which sometimes numbered more than 200, with guns that he illegally imported from the United States, and how he used women from Tivoli Gardens to smuggle cocaine into the United States.
It is the former counselor to Mr. Coke, though, who appears to have had the longest and closest relationship to the defendant, who took over his father’s organization in the early 1990s, prosecutors said.
In 1992, for example, Mr. Coke, also known as Duddus, told the adviser that he needed to obtain more high-powered weapons in order to have more power, both within the group and in Jamaica.
“The older members of the organization needed to understand that he [Duddus] would be running the organization now,” the witness wrote.
The witness said Mr. Coke’s crew included teenagers as young as 14, who ran errands or acted as lookouts until they were old enough to be given weapons. The witness also described Mr. Coke’s brutal code of discipline, and how he once ordered his men to shoot as many people as possible on a street associated with a suspected informer. “I later learned that four or five people were shot,” including two women, the witness wrote.
In smuggling arms into Jamaica from the United States, Mr. Coke's group packaged firearms inside refrigerators and other appliances, and handguns and ammunition inside food shipments, like rice and flour, the witness said.
The witness admitted in his statement that he had been involved in cocaine trafficking for more than a decade, and that at times he had lied to the American authorities. He said he eventually pleaded guilty to conspiracy, and received a long prison term.
The witness said he hoped that his cooperation would lead to his being given a new sentence of time served.
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