U.S. says prisoner runs gang from cell

Planner of firebombing gets 80 years in resentencing hearing

Much of his visible skin is covered in tattoos. Growing up on Greenmount Avenue, he said, boys either became basketball players or drug dealers. But, Smith insisted, he had "no motive" to hurt McAbier and said he felt he was taking the blame for his co-defendants' behavior.

He also said he believed prosecutors and the judge were "stuck on my criminal history." Smith was a suspect in several killings but was never convicted. Baltimore prosecutors dropped two murder charges he faced because of uncooperative witnesses.

During Smith's trial in the firebombing, one fellow gang member, who received a sentence of 12 years in exchange for his cooperation, testified that Smith admitted to killing one woman years earlier and then devising another woman's shooting death a week after the firebombing.

Federal prosecutors can introduce evidence of other criminal conduct - even without an underlying conviction for that conduct - in arguing for a harsher sentence.

After listening to Copperthite, the defense attorney and Smith, the judge immediately handed down the same sentence he had years ago.

"The public needs to be protected from you," Motz told Smith. "If I failed to do it before, I think now I've explained why."

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