Rapper Lor X pleads guilty to overseeing gang, having large amounts of drugs

No parole for first 10 years of possible 40-year sentence

Baltimore rapper Lor X pleaded guilty Monday to leading a criminal organization that distributed drugs throughout the Baltimore area, and which authorities linked to at least one killing in the city.

The artist, whose name is Xavier Johnson, admitted to one count of organizing, supervising and financing a gang and two counts of being in possession of large quantities of a mixture of drugs containing fentanyl.

Sentencing for Johnson, 33, has yet to be scheduled, but Baltimore Circuit Judge Lawrence R. Daniels bound himself to an agreement between Johnson and state prosecutors that will see him handed a punishment of 40 years in prison with all but a period of 15 to 25 years suspended.

Regardless of how many years the judge imposes for Johnson, the first 10 years of incarceration will come without the possibility of parole.

Johnson’s attorney, John Cox, declined to comment ahead of sentencing, as did the Maryland Office of the Attorney General, which prosecuted Johnson and 18 others charged with participating in the criminal enterprise.

Johnson’s plea deal includes a provision allowing him to appeal another judge’s decision last fall not to throw out all evidence obtained by investigators from warrants issued in response to a faulty affidavit authored by a Baltimore sheriff ’s deputy.

Johnson’s attorney at the time, Kenneth Ravenell, had argued that Sgt. Jamile Boles intentionally lied on an affidavit submitted to a federal magistrate judge to continue investigating Johnson.

With Maryland’s highest court suspending Ravenell’s law license on the back of a federal money laundering conviction, he withdrew from Johnson’s case later that fall. Cox began representing Johnson in December.

The investigation that culminated with the convictions of Johnson and others who made up the gang traces back to sheriff ’s deputies’ discovery of fentanyl during an eviction.

During their probe, investigators from the Drug Enforcement Administration and Maryland State Police found Johnson’s crew maintained several stash houses throughout the city to store drugs and guns, according to the indictment.

Among those was a downtown apartment rented by Gerald Brown, the former Baltimore basketball star who led Frederick Douglass High School to an undefeated season in 2002, allegedly at Johnson’s direction.

According to the indictment, investigators raided that apartment on May 20, 2019, finding two kilos of fentanyl, a handgun and drug packaging materials.

Brown was shot to death on June 7 of that year, “shortly after he was heard saying that he was not going to ‘go down’ for the items recovered in the search warrant at 300 St. Paul Place,” the indictment says, without providing more details about the killing.

Neither Johnson nor any others indicted alongside him were charged with murder. However, he and several others were indicted under the state’s gang statute, which resembles federal charges.

The killing of Brown, who authorities alleged to be part of Johnson’s enterprise, was listed in the indictment as one of the gang’s “overt acts.”

All but three of those indicted alongside Johnson have pleaded guilty, with their convictions ranging from conspiracy to distribute drugs to participating in a criminal gang to, in one case, supervising the gang.

None of those who have been convicted to date were sentenced to as much time in prison as Johnson faces.

Charges against two alleged members of Johnson’s organization are pending. One person died before his case was adjudicated in court.