Heroin

Two 44-year-old city men were sentenced to federal prison Friday for taking part in a heroin conspiracy that spread into Baltimore and Anne Arundel counties, the Maryland U.S. attorney's office announced. William Larry Diggs Jr. was sentenced 14 years, and his co-defendant Darrin William Scott, received a five-year term. The men were part of a vast drug ring run by Christian Gettis, who previously described himself in court as a family man living a double life: secretly dealing drugs while holding down a job in retail.

A routine traffic stop in Annapolis on Monday led to the discovery of a large stash of heroin and three arrests, police said in a Friday news release. The 80.3 grams of heroin seized, which would have been worth $16,000 on the street, were not found in the vehicle stopped but in a rental vehicle parked nearby, police said. The woman and two men arrested were all from Annapolis. According to police, officers first stopped a bright green Lincoln in the 1100 block of Medgar Evers Street for undisclosed traffic violations at about 4:40 p.m., and discovered the driver, Deon Matthews, 20, had a suspended license.

A Russian source recently brought an obscure but disturbing article to my attention. Published last month by a little-known online journal called the Oriental Review, the piece, "Active Endeavour And Drug Trafficking," proposed that not a single gram of heroin has been confiscated on the Mediterranean Sea since the inception of NATO's Operation Active Endeavour, a maritime operation launched a month after the Sept. 11 attacks with the mission of "monitoring shipping to help detect, deter and protect against terrorist activity.

Baltimore police arrested two adult males on gun charges in the 2100 block of Tucker Lane, the department announced Saturday morning on Twitter. The officers recovered heroin and a handgun. No further details were immediately available. ywenger@baltsun.com

The ringleader of a heroin ring that imported drugs into Baltimore aboard the Royal Caribbean cruise ship Enchantment of the Seas has been sentenced to 20 years in prison, according to federal prosecutors. Loxly Johnson, 49, of Norfolk, Va., was the final suspect to be imprisoned in the conspiracy that brought international drug trafficking to the shores of Baltimore. He was convicted after a four-day trial in U.S. District Court in Baltimore. A Norfolk woman was sentenced to a year, and three men from Jamaica, Nicaragua and St. Vincent and the Grenadines were sentenced to time served awaiting trial, according to the Maryland U.S. Attorney's Office.

Felicia "Snoop" Pearson , 31. Grew up dealing drugs in East Baltimore and at age 14 killed a youth in a fight. On HBO series "The Wire," played an enforcer for drug organization. Arrested last year as part of a drug sweep and pleaded guilty to conspiracy to sell heroin. Put on probation with a suspended sentence. Shawn Johnson. New York drug supplier described by Pearson as an old friend. Pleaded guilty to being the drug network's main supplier, trafficking in 10-kilogram heroin shipments.

A Baltimore prosecutor offered jurors in a murder trial a painful and troubling portrait Wednesday of the victim's final moments, describing how a killer "suffocated and butchered" the boy , whose screams for help she said went unheard by a relative   who had passed out from heroin, The Sun's Peter Hermann reports: Assistant State's Attorney Jennifer Hastings held up two oversized pictures of 15-year-old Jason Mattison Jr., pointed...

Steven "J.R. " Blackwell, the leader of an East Baltimore drug conspiracy linked to a yearlong street warwith rivals, was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison Friday as part of a guilty plea he struck with prosecutors last fall. Though he was not charged with any acts of violence, authorities believe Blackwell's organization is tied to a wave of shootings touched off by the abduction in April 2008 of his then-teenage brothers. But Blackwell, 27, still faced up to life in prison after being charged with overseeing a multimillion-dollar heroin conspiracy and laundering the proceeds through gambling winnings in Las Vegas and state lottery tickets.

Every illicit drug seems to have its own strange culture and appeal. The modern cocaine trade is socially linked to cash, flash and ostentatious cars. Marijuana has a certain pseudo-intellectual cache. Ecstasy is the vitamin E of the all-night dance party scene. And then there's heroin. Part of the family of drugs extracted from the sap of the poppy bulb, it is among the oldest and most potent painkillers. Its cousin, morphine, remains the pain-killer of last resort even in an era when many similarly ancient remedies have been replaced by more easily controlled synthetic compounds.

A Gwynn Oak man was sentenced Wednesday to 10 years in prison for his role in a conspiracy to sell between 1 and 3 kilograms of heroin, prosecutors said. Recco F. Beaufort, 52, was the principal transporter of heroin for a drug trafficking group that processed and distributed heroin less than 1,000 feet from a charter school, according to a statement from Maryland's U.S. Attorney's Office. Beaufort delivered heroin for a New Jersey man named Charles C. "Billy" Guy, 43, to a Baltimore man named Christian Gettis, 39, the statement said.