MADISON (WKBT) — A 50-year-old St. Paul man was sentenced to 10 years in federal jail Monday for possessing greater than 500 grams of cocaine with the intent to distribute found when he was stopped for rushing in Eau Claire.
Lashawn M. Bennett, who pleaded responsible on Jan. 11, additionally should bear 5 years of supervised launch after his jail time period.
The cost traces to an incident on March 17, 2021, when a Wisconsin State Patrol trooper stopped the car Bennett was driving in Eau Claire. After the trooper detected the odor of marijuana, officers looking out the car discovered a big black bag containing three individually wrapped bricks of cocaine, in keeping with the legal criticism. The cocaine weighed about 7.5 kilos.
When officers interviewed Bennett, he admitted to possessing and transporting three kilograms of cocaine with the intent to distribute it.
At the time of the incident, Bennett was on state probation in Wisconsin for cocaine trafficking and in Minnesota for a prostitution offense. His probation in Wisconsin was revoked, and he’s serving a re-confinement sentence of 9 years in state jail.
Upon sentencing Monday, Chief U.S. District Judge James D. Peterson ordered that the federal sentence be run concurrently with the state jail time period.
Peterson cited the amount of cocaine concerned and Bennett’s legal historical past, which included each prior state and federal cocaine trafficking convictions, as extremely aggravating components. Bennett exhibited a sample of continuous to return to drug trafficking, the choose stated.
The cost towards Bennett was the results of an investigation performed by the Wisconsin State Patrol and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. The Eau Claire County District Attorney’s Office supplied help within the case.
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