26 years in prison for drug operation leader

The leader of what the Baltimore DEA says was one of the biggest drug operations it has ever investigated was sentenced Thursday to 26 years in federal prison, after an 11th-hour effort to unravel his guilty plea was rejected. Richard Byrd, 43, pleaded guilty in November to conspiracy to distribute and possession with intent to distribute cocaine and marijuana, admitting that he was the leader of an organization that moved millions of dollars worth of drugs from Mexican sources in California and Arizona to buyers in Maryland, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Members of the organization used freight companies to ship drugs across the country. On one day in April 2013, authorities in two states seized more than 950 pounds of marijuana and 26 kilograms of cocaine from the group, authorities said. “This case represents the very height of drug organizations operating out of Baltimore in recent history,” Assistant Special Agent in Charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration Don Hibbert said in a statement. Appearing in court for sentencing Thursday, Byrd said he wanted to undo his plea, claiming he had been pressured into it. The night before, a lawyer who said he tried to represent Byrd in the fall sent a scathing letter to the court attacking U.S. District Court Judge Richard Bennett and Byrd’s current lawyer and saying Byrd’s plea should be pulled back. Byrd said he wanted to adopt the letter as a motion of his own. “I’ve been seeking to do that since the day I accepted the plea,” Byrd told Bennett. “My plea was not of my own free will.” Bennett walked through the delays in the case, and reminded Byrd that he said under penalty of perjury during his plea that he was not being pressured or coerced to plea guilty.