Cocaine Trafficker, Who Erased Fingerprints, Gets Life In Prison
PHOENIX - William
Wallace Keegan, aka Richard Alan King, 62, of Palm Harbor, Florida (and
previously of Calif. and New York), was sentenced yesterday to five
concurrent life sentences for drug trafficking and 240 months for money
laundering related to his drug trafficking activities. Keegan was
found guilty in June 2009, after a 10-day federal jury trial, of one
count of Conspiracy to Possess With Intent to Distribute Five Kilograms
or More of Cocaine, four counts of Possession With Intent To Distribute
Five Kilograms or More of Cocaine and one Count of Conspiracy to Commit
Money Laundering.
During the trial, the evidence showed that Keegan
had all 10 fingers surgically altered in the 1990's to obliterate his
fingerprints above the first joint. A Drug Enforcement Administration
forensic fingerprint analyst was able to match the lower joint
fingerprints from the arrest under the name of Richard King in January
2008 with a 1977 arrest, confirming his identity as William Wallace
Keegan.
30-Year Fugitive Had Ten Fingers Surgically Altered to Evade Capture
“This sentencing marks an
end to a nationwide drug trafficking enterprise that spanned over three
decades,” said DEA Special Agent in Charge Elizabeth W. Kempshall.
“William Wallace Keegan was the leader of an extensive pipeline of
illicit drugs who did everything he could to hide his identity and
evade capture. Now, he will be behind bars and known only by his
inmate number.”
U.S. Attorney
Dennis K. Burke stated, “With this sentence and the conclusion of the
investigation, a drug pipeline from Mexico into Arizona and across the
United States has been shut down. After spending years avoiding law
enforcement, a career criminal has been brought to justice through the
teamwork of dedicated law enforcement officials.”
The
evidence presented at trial showed that between November 2005 and
January 2008, Keegan and co-conspirators acquired cocaine in Arizona
and transported it, primarily via the U.S. Postal Service, to New
York. Keegan had previously been trafficking marijuana from Arizona
and California to New York and elsewhere and shifted to cocaine in
2005. During the early part of the conspiracy, Keegan, who used the
false identity of Richard King, traveled to Arizona and personally took
possession of the cocaine from Arizona sources of supply. Testimony
showed that the drugs were brought into the U.S. from Mexico. As the
conspiracy progressed, Keegan had co-conspirators mail the cocaine to
him at various hotels in Long Island, New York.
“The
tough sentence William Keegan received was reflective of his extensive
drug trafficking activities and the lengths he went to in order to
evade law enforcement,” said Pete Zegarac, Inspector in Charge of the
Phoenix Division Postal Inspection Service. “Our nation is a safer
place with Keegan off the streets indefinitely.”
Keegan was caught by law enforcement through an undercover DEA
operation in Hauppauge, New York, where he accepted suitcases
containing 38 kilograms of sham cocaine. The conspiracy was
responsible for well over 150 kilograms of cocaine with a value of more
than $2 million. The money was used in part to promote the illegal
drug business, resulting in the money laundering conviction.
In sentencing Keegan to life in prison, U.S. District Judge Susan R.
Bolton relied on the seriousness of the offenses, identifying drug
trafficking offenses in the quantities engaged in by the defendant as
some of the most serious federal crimes. She also noted that Keegan
had engaged in drug trafficking for more than 30 years and that this
conspiracy had stretched across the U.S. and involved large amounts of
drugs and drug traffickers. She noted that the sentence was needed to
keep any community safe into which Keegan would otherwise be released
and also to deter others from committing similar offenses.
Sign up for the OV Daily Newsletter
OV Social
Drug warriors are continuously subverting the Constitutional laws and Constitutional rights and trying to convince the citizens of this Country that we are not capable of making our own decisions about what we choose to put in our own bodies. That’s the same tactic that was used on the American Indians, “you’re not smart enough to govern yourselves, you need the “Great Father in Washington” to tell you what’s best for you”. We all know how well that turned out for the native Americans . The drug war is no different. It is a hoax, a smokescreen, designed to make everyone think the drug war prohibitionists are doing something good for America and Americans while in fact they are taking away Constitutional rights and freedoms like no other policy in the history of this Country and CAUSING unnecessary, unproductive harm and waste on an astronomical scale.
It’s far past time for rational drug policy that has PROVEN to get much better results than our drug war.
The alleged goals of the drug war are to reduce drug related death, disease, crime and drug use . It has accomplished NONE of those goals after almost 100 years of prohibition policy, over 1 trillion tax dollars wasted, ever tougher criminal penalties, arresting millions of Americans, removing an ever increasing list of Constitutional rights and all the other irrational effort and wasted resources that have been put into this failed harmful unproductive policy.
We have laws on the books that are causing a nonviolent US citizen to be arrested every 17 seconds on drug charges. Those laws have been in effect for almost 100 years and the goals of those laws are not being accomplished AT ALL. It’s time for the voters and our elected representatives to say enough is enough and support long term proven methods of dealing with drug use and addiction in an effective rational manner rather than continuing to feed the destructive, harmful, wasteful, unproductive, drug war white elephant.
The drug war is a real war and it is an unnecessarily harmful, completely unwinnable, and wasteful war. It is in fact a war against a certain large percentage of our own population that chooses to different degrees and with a wide range or results, to put a wide variety of different substances in their own bodies and for a wide variety of reasons. It’s being fought in our communities with real guns , military styled raids against nonviolent citizens, teargas, dogs and virtually every other tool of war available.
Despite the drug war and all the money and efforts that have been put into it, drugs today are more potent, more readily available and often less expensive than they were in 1971 when Richard Nixon coined the phrase “ war on drugs ”. The U.S. had 200,000 prisoners in the 1970s, it currently has over 2.3 million, making it the largest incarcerator in world history. The U.S. accounts for 5 percent of the world’s population and 25 percent of its prison population. The drug war is the single largest contributor to the US becoming a police state.
Right now we are installing 900 new prison beds and hiring 150 new correction officers every 2 weeks. Here in the “land of the free” for the first time in history, more than one of every 100 adults is in jail or prison. 2,319,258 Americans were incarcerated at the start of 2008. The United States now incarcerates more people than any other nation on earth, far more than even much more populous communist China. Each prisoner costs the taxpayers an average of about $35,000.00 to $40,000.00 per year to incarcerate. Over half of our federal prisoners are serving time for a drug offense. Largely because of the drug war, arresting Americans is becoming big business. We now have companies attempting to privatize our penal systems. These companies are huge supporters of drug prohibition and any other laws that cause Americans to be incarcerated. The more Americans behind bars, the more money they get from the government . This policy goes against EVERYTHING this Country was founded on!
Google: Just Say Know to the drug war
Article says nothing about any actual harm being done by Keegan, yet quotes a judge describing this as very serious, and that him being put away would make the community safe . Seems pretty strange... I'm not clear on why this should be seen as "one of the most serious offenses" (ie, worse than rampant fraud or massive environmental destruction by large corporations, say). Can it even be demonstrated that putting him away is going to result in less people using drugs ? I highly doubt that... they may not be able to get what they want from their usual source, but that just means they'll be more desperate and willing to try less reliable sources.
Not that I know King to be a safe and reliable source of cocaine . I don't know anything about his coke, or his business practices. But it's precisely those things which are important, and yet not at all discussed. Some coke dealers allow their supply to become contaminated with all sorts of toxic compounds, including deworming agents: those dealers need to be punished severely. Others likely use techniques of harassment and intimidation -- those should be prevented from doing so as well.
The harm reduction agency I'm affiliated with has the slogan: "Know your body, know your mind, know your source." Putting dealers in prison makes knowing your source very difficult, and that reduces safety for everyone involved, because it could mean that you're forced to go from one supply you know is pure and trustworthy, to another where you could end up getting poisoned or robbed.
It's possible, of course, that King was, in fact, putting deworming agents in his coke, and was attacking people or similar. That would be a serious offense, and removing him would make the community safer. But that isn't the evidence that was presented.