Oakland Career Criminal Gets Stiff Sentence On Crack Conviction
SAN FRANCISCO (CBS SF) - A 24-year-old Oakland drug dealer has been sentenced in federal court in San Francisco to 13 years and four months in prison for selling cocaine.
Demario McDaniels pleaded guilty before U.S. District Judge William Alsup in January to one count of selling 1.9 ounces of crack cocaine to a federal undercover agent in downtown Oakland last year.
He was sentenced by Alsup on Wednesday.
Because McDaniels was defined as a career offender, with four previous felony drug convictions, his conviction carried a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years in prison.
The previous convictions were for possessing or selling marijuana, valium and cocaine.
The sentence was halfway between the minimum 10-year sentence requested by McDaniels' defense attorneys and a 17-year penalty sought by prosecutors.
Defense attorneys argued that the sentence should take into account McDaniels' youth, his untreated cocaine addiction and a difficult childhood in which his father was addicted to heroin and his mother suffered a brain aneurysm when he was 11.
Prosecutors urged the judge to consider to McDaniels' previous record and "the effects that his acts have on impoverished neighborhoods."
Steven Herkins, chief of the regional office of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, said Thursday, "This lengthy prison sentence will remove a dangerous criminal who has plagued our neighborhoods by selling drugs."
McDaniels was indicted last year on three counts of selling cocaine to undercover agents and one count of possessing the drug.
Prosecutors dismissed three of the charges in exchange for MdDaniels' guilty plea to one count.
(Copyright 2011 by CBSSan Francisco. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Wire services may have contributed to this report.)
