Thomas MacMIllan Photo
Lawyers for the defense: Jon Einhorn and Sebastian DeSantis.
The first two defendants in a historic criminal sweep will be heading to the slammer for up to 20 years, after a jury Friday found them guilty of selling crack and weed.
After four days of testimony, 12 jurors Friday found Tylon “Bucky” Vaughn and Michael Thompson guilty of taking part in a drug ring that moved kilograms of crack and weed through New Haven.
The jury announced the verdict at around 1 p.m. in Judge Ellen Bree Burns’ second-floor courtroom in New Haven federal court.
Vaughn and Thompson were both found guilty of one count each of conspiracy to deal narcotics. Vaughn was also found guilty of two other drug charges.
Lawyers for both men said they plan to appeal the verdicts.
Vaughn and Thompson were the first two men to stand trial as part of Operation Bloodline, the largest federal criminal sweep in state history.
After an 18-month investigation involving 22 tapped phones, cops arrested 105 people in May 2012. Police claimed to have dismantled a massive drug ring connected to the Dwight-Kensington neighborhood’s violent Tre Bloods gang.
Most of the 105 arrestees pleaded guilty to the charges against them. Vaughn and Thompson fought the charges.
In court, they faced their former boss, drug kingpin Chris “White Boy” Morley. He went from orchestrating shipments of pounds of marijuana and thousands of oxycodone pills to spilling the beans to the feds.
On the stand this week, Morley laid out the details of his entire operation, including Vaughn and Thompson’s roles in the ring.
The two defendants’ attorneys sought to discredit Morley as a self-serving liar. Their efforts were revealed as unsuccessful when the verdict came down on Friday.
Not only did the jury find Vaughn and Thompson guilty, it found them guilty of conspiracy that involved a maximum amounts of drugs.
The jury had the choice of finding that Thompson was involved in conspiracy to distribute a quantity of drugs between 28 grams of crack and five kilograms of cocaine. The jury chose the latter, deciding that Thompson had been involved with five kilos. The jury also chose the maximum drug quantity for Vaughn’s verdict.
Those quantities will affect the length of sentences that each man might receive.
Attorney Jon Einhorn, Thompson’s attorney, said the two defendants could face close to 20 years each. If they had pleaded guilty, it still would likely have been 10 to 15 years, he said.
Morley could get up to 17 years, or fewer than five, with a special consideration by the sentencing judge.
Einhorn said he was surprised that the jury chose the five-kilogram quantity in the Thompson verdict. “That wasn’t the evidence in the case,” he said. Morley had testified that he transferred only about two kilograms of cocaine to Thompson over the length of the conspiracy.
Einhorn said Thompson was “sweating profusely” when the verdict came down and briefly collapsed on the table in front of him. “I think he’s alright,” Einhorn said.
More trials are scheduled in the aftermath of Operation Bloodline. Several defendants will face a jury in Judge Burns’ courtroom starting Dec. 16.
Einhorn said some of those defendants may choose to plead guilty, now that they’ve seen how Vaughn and Thompson fared before a jury.
Past Independent stories on the trial:
• Bloodline Defense Lawyers: That’s All You’ve Got?
• Drug Trade’s “Great White Hope” Grilled
• “Bloodline” Trail Leads To White Boy Chris