ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, September 20, 1996 TAG: 9609200048
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JAN VERTEFEUILLE STAFF WRITER
Roanoke crack dealer Jerome "Doobie" Jones may never have passed a government class in high school, but he learned firsthand this week the power of the U.S. Supreme Court.
Arguing his own case in motions filed from prison, the ninth-grade dropout got his 10-year sentence cut in half because of a retroactive Supreme Court decision limiting when a drug dealer can be convicted of a gun charge.
Based on that ruling, U.S. District Judge Samuel Wilson in Roanoke vacated part of Jones' sentence. Jones, who is 20, could be out of prison by the time he's 24.
Jones was sentenced in November to five years for selling crack and five years for using a firearm during a drug deal. The gun charge carries a mandatory minimum five-year sentence, which must be served on top of any other sentence.
Prosecutors and federal agents credit the stiff sentence with reducing violence during drug trafficking because dealers know the penalty for being caught with a gun. But until a Supreme Court decision last winter narrowed the law's reach, prosecutors imposed that extra punishment even if the weapon was found in a drug dealer's car, in a locked trunk or a closet in his home.
In a unanimous ruling a month after Jones was sentenced, the Supreme Court threw out that definition as too broad. From now on, a criminal must hold, brandish or fire the weapon to get the extra punishment, the justices said.
Since then, prisoners convicted of the gun charge have been busy filing motions to reduce their sentences, but most of those in Roanoke federal court haven't been granted because the inmates' circumstances don't qualify. Judges also have the option of holding a resentencing hearing, where they can drop the prison time for the gun charge but increase somewhat the time for the drugs. In Jones' case, Wilson ruled that wasn't necessary and simply dropped the five-year gun sentence.
Jones was charged with the crime after police searched his mother's house and found 132 grams of crack and a .44-caliber revolver in his bedroom. They also found $47,000 stuffed in a shoebox under his bed.
Police believe that, for a time, Jones supplied most of the crack users in Southwest Roanoke. Using crack is stupid, he said during a jail interview last year, but selling it was good business. He started working for other crack dealers at 14 and worked his way up to being a major source in Roanoke.
He was arrested twice - at 14 and 15 - and walked away with probation both times.
"What does this teach a young man who may have some business acumen?" his attorney, Jeff Rudd, argued to the judge at his sentencing. "It teaches him that the cost of being involved in crack cocaine does not exceed the benefits of that."
When Jones reached adulthood and was arrested, his case was taken over by federal prosecutors, and he faced a mandatory 15 years in prison. He got five years of that lopped off his sentence because he cooperated with the government and testified against his brother, Eric "Nike" Jones. Eric Jones' trial on marijuana charges ended with a hung jury. He was murdered four months later.
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