In missives from a Rhode Island jail, a New Haven rapper asks why the feds are taking so long to show him why they consider him a top target of the largest drug sweep in Connecticut history — and he brands them a “losing team” looking for “more time on the clock in order to win.”
That message, a mixed plea for justice and shout of defiance, comes from Marcus Wylie, aka “Wiley Don.”
He’s well known in New Haven’s black community as a leading local rapper. (Click on the play arrow to watch a sample of his work.)
Federal agents and local cops who spent a year investigating the Tre Bloods drug-dealing gang in the Dwight/Kensington area knew him as a high-ranking member of a the Klean-Up Krew, which they describe as a cocaine-dealing organization. (Another alleged ringleader, Jameel “Biggs,” insisted in this Independent interview that the group is simply a rap-promoting and community-improvement organization, although he conceded he has sold drugs at times.)
The feds arrested Wiley Don in May as part of a sweep of 105 accused Tre Blood drug-traffickers. They called the investigation “Operation Bloodline.” It produced the largest such sweep ever in the state.
Since then delays in providing evidence have bogged down the case. They have led defense attorneys to charge the feds with depriving the defendants of their constitutional rights to review evidence against them and to have a speedy trial. A federal judge, sympathetic to the arguments, chewed out a prosecutor in the case. Read about that — and the extensive arguments back and forth between the U.S. Attorney’s office and defense attorneys—here.
Wiley Don makes a similar complaint in a series of messages he handwrote behind bars in Donald W. Wyatt Detention Facility, a controversial private pre-trial prison in Central Falls, Rhode Island, where most of the Operation Bloodline arrestees remain warehoused. Meanwhile, the feds have promised to try to speed up the process of preparing evidence for them to review. Meanwhile, the feds have won extensions of “speedy trial” deadlines to prepare the material and have moved to keep some of the evidence sealed to prevent reprisals against cooperating witnesses.
“We, the detainees, are what you call sittin ducks waiting for the hunter (The Federal Gov.) to get his best aim (our most incriminating priors) and take us out for good,” Wiley Don writes. He accuses the government of buying time “to dig deep into our past” and force guilty pleas.
“They overpower individuals with high priced Bonds, high priced lawyers, long jail sentences, and the evasion of our private lives,” he writes.
He also insists that he’s innocent of the conspiracy to sell heroin charge he faces.
Wiley Don’s lawyer, Francis O’Reilly, declined comments on his client’s writings or the specifics of the government’s requests for extra time.
In general, he said, “extensive delay is detrimental to my clients in federal drug prosecutions. The government’s case becomes stronger over time due to the pressures that they put on some people involved to cooperate against their codefendants.”
Diane Polan, an attorney for another alleged Operation Bloodline ringleader, said she “agrees with most of what Mr. Wiley is saying” in the missives from prison. “When you’re about to indict 105 people and you’ve had 10 months of wiretapping, you should have that evidence available on that day.” One of the prosecutors in the case has responded that the government is doing the best it can, and that it had good reason to lock up so many defendants in the case.
Following are excerpts from Wiley Don’s missives, which an intermediary delivered to the Independent’s offices. (The titles are WIley Don’s.)
What’s Right N’ What’s Wrong
Being one of the detainees in this indictment I feel the need to speak up on our human rights …
I would LOVE to know what made 23 people, claiming to be the ‘GRAND JURY,’ voluntarily sign off a warrant to have me taken off the streets and placed under FEDERAL CUSTODY. We’ve been here for about a month now and all we know is that we’ve conspired (As a whole unit) to distribute large amounts of drugs throughout New Haven, but neither of us has physical or substantial evidence worthy enough to have had us, me, him or her taken away from the lives we once lived HOME in our town. …
IF there happens to be evidence powerful enough to have had this happen, that evidence should have been brought forth before any indictment, list of names, and definitely before any place of incarceration. There’s 104 others who firmly agree with that. It doesn’t take 28 days to reveal that ‘HISTORY MAKING’ evidence. Majority of us have done jail time in the past, making most of us convicted felons and giving us inmate numbers. The difference from past incarceration and now is that we knew what we were serving time for back then. Now we’re being held without knowledge of individual mistakes, and being charged for what the City of New Haven has endured from the hands of the real criminals who’ve managed to outsmart the NHPD. …
For the Federal Prosecutor to bargain with our lives, and demand more time from the Federal Judge in order to present days old evidence on all 105 detainees, is only a cry for help if you ask me. It’s absurd. It’s NOT FAIR, and it’s showing how unprepared even the brightest of us can be. …
We, the detainees, are what you call sittin ducks waiting for the hunter (The Federal Gov.) to get his best aim (our most incriminating priors) and take us out for good. I feel all this time being bought by the federal prosecutor is only used to dig deep into our past, as far as possible to make us into the people we tried so hard to overcome. …
If the prosecutor can ask for more time on the clock in order to win, then so should any Professional Team who’s losing as the 4th quarter of Second half comes to closing. All that does is reveal the fact that even the most careful makes careless mistakes, even the best gets upset, and the bigger you are, the harder you fall.
…
Federal Slavery
The F.E.D.S. have a 98.6 conviction rate because they lie about and intimidate their defendants beyond the point of defense, stripping them of their credentials, making their arguments POINTLESS due to past behavior or honest mistakes made prior to their conviction. …
They overpower individuals with high priced Bonds, high priced lawyers, long jail sentences, and the evasion of our private lives, makin us feel we have nothin to hide. In all actuality we become alienated and hide the fact that we have ‘HUMAN RIGHTS’ and become afraid to speak up on our own behalfs because have no degree in law or criminal justice. No one, including the state will show the courage to test the wrongful doing of the Federal Government, leaving us, the civilians, in worthless state only turning to our Religious beliefs to handle “man made problems.”
…
ME AND BIG!
… The FEDERAL GOVERNMENT, or officials, feels it our fault because with our stature and our recognition we had the opportunity to put a stop to a great deal of the drug-dealing, and murdering in our ‘HOME TOWN,’ and all we did was tend to our Business at hand, turning our backs on the STREETS. … I never knew turning my back on the streets came with a fee of federal Jail time, due to not budding in problems we had nothing to do with. If that’s the case, and if credit is being taken and given from us, credit us for the lives we’ve managed to detour and save. The lives we’ve turned away from the street life, corrupt living, and demonic thinking. … Credit us for the lives we’ve given a lane to drive in. The lives we’ve helped set goals for. The lives we’ve SAVED and made Better. Give us credit for the Beef we’ve quashed. Give us credit for the neighborhood lines we’ve made disappear, making NEWS HAVEN 1 place and not 6 or 7 land masses called HOODS which were dividing families, and detouring educational opportunities for our youth.
Paul Bass Photo
Wiley Don (at right in above photo) confronting New Haven’s mayor last year about police tactics. Wiley Don complained to the mayor that he’d seen a cop on a raid wearing a ski mask. It turned out that Operation Bloodline had just gotten underway—and the agent with the ski mask was protecting his identity on a smaller raid because on other days he was allegedly buying drugs from Wiley Don, among others.