The Sunreports that a man was sentenced to 11 years for dealing crack. That’s a lot of years for crack, I thought. Of course, like everything with crime and criminals in Baltimore, that’s not the whole story.
This 28-year-old man, William Floyd Crudup, shot two city police officer in 2005. His trial ended in a mistrial because one juror, “refused to participate in the looking at the evidence and told the judge that she had made up her mind about the case at the start of the trail.”
This is not the place to experiment with Jury Nullification.
Sometimes people are just ig-nent. This isn’t the first time a Baltimore City jury refused to convict a guilty man for shooting or killing a police officer. It’s why police officers don’t trust city juries. Baltimore is a place where it is all too common for one person in twelve to believe it is every man’s right to kill police officers. I remember the shock and disbelief I felt when the killer of Officer Kavon Gavin walked free (he too has since been imprisoned for something else). Other officers were not surprised.
Crudup was still behind bars. Three years later the retrial of Crudup was still in the works. But back in 2005, a few days after he was charged with shooting the police officers, police raided Crudup’s homes and found drugs and guns and ammo.
The Feds took the case and got Crudup to cop a plea (3 years later). So it’s not 11 years for crack dealing. It’s 11 years for shooting two police officers. It just happens that they got him for crack.
Justice is a game. Everybody involved in the system knows this. The good guys play to win, too.
In the middle is the drug-dealing cop-killing malaka. (Photo by Dave Sidaway)