Pubdate: Mon, 07 Feb 2005 Source: News & Observer (NC) Copyright: 2005 The News and Observer Publishing Company Contact: http://www.news-observer.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/304 Author: Mandy Locke Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/prison.htm (Incarceration) Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topics/project+safe+neighborhoods FEDS CUFF GUN-LAW VIOLATORS Punishment Goes Too Far, Some Say Keen's Term May Exceed 15 Years. Richard Steven Keen knows he messed up. To score crack cocaine, he stole anything he could from his parents' home near Smithfield -- a lawnmower, a pickup, a gun collection. By the time he was 25, he had racked up eight felony convictions and pulled nearly three years in state prison. But last year, Keen started shaping up. After he was convicted of the gun thefts last February, a judge ordered him into a drug rehab program in Rocky Mount. He was drug-free, driving a dump truck for a tree removal company and making plans to marry his girlfriend. Then federal agents showed up in June and hauled Keen to jail again. He had become a target of a federal program to get violent firearms offenders off the streets. For days, he thought the feds had made a mistake and picked up the wrong guy. "When I was finally on the right path -- taking on responsibility and staying clean -- it was took from me," Keen said by phone from jail in Tarboro. Because of his record, he is awaiting a sentence this month that is likely to exceed 15 years. The program, known as Project Safe Neighborhoods, joins local, state and federal agencies to arrest people who possess guns illegally -- because they are convicted felons or illegal immigrants or are under restraining orders -- and prosecute them in federal court. More than 200 gun-crime offenders in the Triangle have been arrested and prosecuted under the program since 2002. Most were sent to federal prison for a long time. But some worry that this aggressive effort to curb gun crime also is sweeping in nonviolent offenders who don't deserve such tough punishment. "While 90 percent of these are valid, I'm sure there are some that are getting railroaded," said Robert Nunley, a Raleigh defense attorney. Keen had not committed any new crimes to trigger the federal prosecution. But the Johnston County Sheriff's Department flagged his case for federal court because he was a convicted felon who possessed firearms illegally when he stole two shotguns and four revolvers from his parents' house. He admitted as much last February when he pleaded guilty in state court to larceny of the firearms, agreed to enter drug rehab and drew a three-year suspended sentence. "I definitely screwed up, and I should be punished," Keen said. "But I'm not a violent person. I've been known to have a temper, but nothing that should warrant 15 years in federal prison." Frank Whitney, U.S. attorney for North Carolina's Eastern District, makes no apology for prosecuting Keen. "He's chosen to live a life of crime. We have no choice but to try that federally. He made that decision, not us," Whitney said. Keen is among 65 people from Johnston County who have been prosecuted under the initiative since 2002. The Wake Sheriff's Office joined the effort in 2003, and since then, 20 of its repeat offenders have faced charges in federal court. Raleigh police sent 164 offenders to federal prosecutors over the past two years. In the city of Durham last year, local and federal officials picked 30 cases to try federally through Project Safe Neighborhood. Officers applaud effort Whitney said the program cuts down on gun violence. "Those individuals who have been skirting on the edge for years, they will eventually commit the murder, the rape, kill someone in a drug deal or will get killed," he said. Local law enforcement officers, weary of seeing the same offenders in the system every year, welcomed the relief, Johnston Sheriff Steve Bizzell said. "We never could figure out how to get these people terrorizing our neighborhoods out of here," he said. Bizzell cited the case of Geoffrey H. Simmons, 30, who had robbed his neighbors in Selma, assaulted people and dealt drugs, according to court records. In 2003, when deputies showed up at Simmons' mobile home to settle a domestic dispute, they found four kilos of cocaine and a gun. The drug charges factored into the sentence, but the gun possession alone was enough to prosecute Simmons in federal court. He is serving a 14-year prison term. Officers say they have warned convicted felons about the program through a public awareness campaign. In-your-face messages plaster billboards in Johnston County, posters on buses in Raleigh and commercials at movie theaters in Goldsboro. Federal agents even schedule talks with convicted felons in some communities to admonish them about the costs of carrying a gun. "Now, when people get picked up, they are asking the officers, 'Am I going federal?' " said Jane Jackson, assistant U.S. attorney heading Project Safe Neighborhoods for the Eastern District. "The word is definitely out." Caught off guard But not everyone gets the message. Raleigh lawyer Vaughn Winborne Jr. represented a Fayetteville man who was caught with a gun eight years after he had gotten in trouble for a felony drug possession. The man had the gun because he lived in a bad neighborhood and wanted to protect himself, Winborne said, but wound up being sent to federal prison for about seven years. Until December, it was legal in North Carolina for a convicted felon to keep a gun in his home or business. Now, it's illegal under both state and federal law. "He wasn't the evil monster that the law clearly said he was, but the judge had no choice," Winborne said. Many of the federal gun laws impose mandatory minimum prison terms set by Congress. Keen's family said they also were caught off guard by the federal prosecution. Patricia Keen, his mother, said she would have done things differently had she realized the stakes. "When he got out of prison, I would have made sure there were no firearms in the house," she said. Defense lawyers in Johnston County, however, have learned to ask whether federal prosecutors are interested in their clients' cases. If the feds are snooping, the lawyers say, they will stall action in state court. A plea bargain, like the one in Keen's case, could be used as evidence in federal court later. "You certainly don't want your client to plead to, say, armed robbery, and then make it a super slam-dunk for the federal prosecutors on the possession of a firearm by a felon," said Michael Reece, a Smithfield lawyer. So, they wait, as do their clients, some of them sitting in jail unable to post bail. "When you get word that the feds will take a case, they seem to take their sweet time about it," Reece said. "The jail has to house them, and all we can tell them is that the feds are picking up their case." Keen, for his part, said he knows all about waiting. He figures he'll have gray hair by the time he gets out of prison. "People don't really start a family when they are 40," Keen said. "I think I missed my chance." - --- MAP posted-by: Larry Seguin