Justice Department Nominee Lisa Monaco Prosecuted Black Man Sentenced To 27 Years In Prison For Selling $20 Worth Of Drugs
Lisa Monaco, who has been nominated to serve as deputy attorney general, helped prosecute a black man who was sentenced to 27 years in prison for selling $20 worth of drugs in a drug sting, court records show.
Monaco disclosed in her responses to the Senate that she was an assistant U.S. attorney on a case against Patrick Steward. Steward and another man were arrested in 2002 on charges that they sold two dime bags of heroin to an undercover cop, court records show.
Biden came under heavy criticism during the presidential primaries for sponsoring aggressive anti-crime and anti-drug laws while he was in the Senate.
President Joe Biden’s nominee to serve as deputy attorney general helped prosecute a black man who was sentenced to 27 years in prison for selling $20 worth of heroin to an undercover police officer. The government dropped charges against the man’s co-defendant as part of a plea deal, court records show.
Lisa Monaco, who Biden tapped for the Justice Department position, was one of the assistant U.S. attorneys who prosecuted a case in 2003 against Reginald C. Steward, a Washington, D.C. man who was charged following an undercover drug bust.
Steward was arrested in Washington, D.C. on Aug. 20, 2002 and was charged with unlawful distribution of heroin, according to court records.
He was convicted at a jury trial on April 16, 2003, and was sentenced to 27 years in prison. An appeals court in 2007 upheld Steward’s conviction, but noted that the evidence presented against him at trial wasn’t “overwhelming.”
But Steward’s co-defendant, who physically conducted the drug exchange with the undercover police officer, had his charges dropped after he pleaded guilty to drug possession in another case. Court records for the man, Bobby Praylow, show that he received a 12-month jail sentence.
Monaco, whose most recent government position was as homeland security adviser to then-President Barack Obama, disclosed her work on Steward’s case in her written responses to questions from the Senate Judiciary Committee as part of her confirmation process to the Justice Department position.
“Defendant was convicted of unlawful distribution of heroin after a jury trial,” Monaco wrote in her disclosure.
https://dailycaller.com/2021/02/01/lisa-monaco-joe-biden-justice-department-reginald-steward/