Drug case guilty plea by Jam Master slay suspect
One of the men accused in the 2002 murder of hip-hop star Jam Master Jay has pleaded guilty to drug trafficking charges — taking a plea that means a minimum 15year prison sentence.
Jay Bryant, 50, still faces a looming murder trial in the RunDMC founder’s 2002 slaying, but he pleaded guilty Friday to all four counts in a separate drug trafficking and gun possession case in Brooklyn Federal Court.
Eating the indictment means a mandatory minimum of 10 years on one of the counts, and another mandatory five years on another count, with the sentences running consecutively. He could face more time than that, depending on what Judge Brian Cogan decides at his March 7 sentencing.
“They refused to make him an offer despite our earnest attempts, so he accepted responsibility for what he’s done,” defense lawyer Cesar de Castro told the Daily News on Monday.
Bryant denies involvement in the Jam Master Jay murder.
Until his arrest last year, Bryant acted as “the head of a narcotics syndicate in the Columbia, Pa., area that obtained its supply of narcotics in New York City,” according to prosecutors.
The case against Bryant involved multiple crack cocaine deals with informants, while law enforcement agents watched and recorded. He was also caught on video weighing out crack, and was caught with crack during a car stop, and more than 200 grams of powder cocaine in his home, according to court filings.
“To protect my drug business, I had a gun,” he said as he entered his guilty plea Friday.
Bryant was locked up in the drug case when he was indicted in May in Jam Master Jay’s slaying — nearly three years after the arrest of two other men, Ronald “Tinard” Washington and Karl Jordan, for the killing.
De Castro successfully argued to sever Bryant’s case from that of the other two suspects, who are set to go to trial in January. Bryant’s trial likely won’t happen until at least 2025.
Federal prosecutors allege Washington and Jordan wanted revenge on Jam Master Jay for cutting them out of a nearly 10-kilogram drug deal when they stormed into his Queens music studio on Oct. 30, 2002.
Prosecutors believe Jordan was the shooter, but court documents allege that Bryant bragged to an unnamed third party about pulling the trigger. The feds also say they have a sample of Bryant’s DNA on a piece of clothing left at the scene.