Authorities say Terrell Allen was a Baltimore drug kingpin who kidnapped the teenage brothers of an alleged rival in 2008 and returned them for a half-million-dollar ransom, launching a string of retaliatory shootings that has continued right up until this summer.
But his attorney denies the allegations, and Allen has never been formally charged with any of them.
Instead, he was convicted Tuesday on the easiest thing to prove: possession of ammunition, a federal offense for a felon like Allen, who has prior convictions for manslaughter and drugs and has beaten dozens of other charges, including murder.
"Many suspects with lengthy arrest records, but who have been acquitted or served little time in previous cases, find that there usually is no way out of a federal felon-in-possession charge," Maryland U.S. Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein said in an e-mailed statement. It's "an extraordinarily valuable tool to reduce gun crime."
Prosecutors don't even have to prove that a gun was fired or that there was a gun. Bullets are enough for felons who've lost their civil right to own a firearm. And on Tuesday, Allen, 35, pleaded guilty in Baltimore U.S. District Court to possessing 27 rounds of ammunition in a Winchester box.
Officers found the bullets in a nightstand next to his bed, through a search warrant that was part of an investigation into a May 2008 shooting in which Allen was a victim. He was shot along with three others, including Omar Spriggs, identified as his brother, and his father, Tony Allen, both of whom were killed.
Allen now faces a maximum of life in federal prison, but his lawyer is hoping he gets fewer than nine years based on mitigating circumstances, including the trauma he suffered in the incident, when he and three other men were shot in front of his family's appliance store. He watched his relatives die there and lives with the knowledge that a store worker, Reginald Davis, was hit four times.
Allen was incarcerated for the bullet possession shortly thereafter. His lawyer said he has had no psychiatric help since then, and he has received very minimal medical care to address his other needs, which include the hole left in his gut from a colostomy operation.
"There's no evidence to suggest he did anything to warrant being shot eight times," defense attorney Gerald Ruter said in an interview.
