Posse boss could get 28-year jail term

VIVIAN BLAKE, for more than 10 years, one of the "most wanted" drug and racketeering fugitives from US justice, is scheduled to be sentenced on June 2, 2000 in Federal Court, Miami, Florida.

He was supposed to have been sentenced yesterday in the US District (Federal) Court, Miami, Southern District of Florida, but it has been set back for a week, his lawyer David P. Rowe, told The Gleaner.

Blake, 44, known also as Dave Williams and "Jamaican Dave" and an alleged leader of the Shower Posse in Florida, New York and Virginia, was indicted by a federal grand jury in Miami on October 13, 1988 on 62 federal charges including eight murders in Miami, Los Angeles and New York City.

The indictment charged him and 34 suspected members of the Shower Posse with racketeering, smuggling and distributing marijuana and cocaine from the Bahamas, buying guns and bribing witnesses.

But Blake slipped a nationwide dragnet and fled to Jamaica aboard a cruise ship. Some of the men charged on the indictment have served prison terms and have been deported to Jamaica. Others are still in prison in the USA.

In the US Courthouse, 301 North Miami Avenue, Miami, Florida, on February 23, he pleaded guilty before Senior Judge Norman Roettger, to racketeering pursuant to the 1988 Federal Racket Influenced and Corrupt Organisations (RICO) indictment in Miami and a cocaine conspiracy charge filed in 1993 in the Eastern District of Virginia.

Blake, fingered by St. Kitts national Cecil "Moddler" Connor (since extradited to Miami), and others, as leader of the Shower Posse, fought hard and long to prevent his extradition to the United States, but he was taken back there last year.

The prosecution is seeking a 28-year sentence for Blake.

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