Final defendants sentenced in Jessup prison smuggling case

A federal judge handed down sentences this week to the last three defendants in a racketeering case involving a smuggling operation at the Jessup Correctional Institution.

On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Theodore D. Chuang sentenced former Jessup correctional officer Dominique Booker, 45, of Baltimore, to 27 months in federal prison for her involvement in the smuggling ring, where investigators said inmates worked with correctional officers and others on the outside to get drugs and other contraband into the facility in order to sell them at marked-up prices. A total of 15 people were charged in the corruption case.

Authorities searched Booker’s car in January 2019 and found synthetic marijuana, loose cigarettes and alcohol, but did not charge her until the next year when all fifteen defendants were indicted on federal racketeering counts for their involvement in the smuggling operation.

Inmates told investigators in 2017 that Booker was involved in the drug conspiracy, according to her plea agreement. The filing says Booker would have romantic text message conversations and discuss drug smuggling operations with an inmate, William Cox, 45, who was sentenced Thursday to 33 additional months of prison for his involvement.

When Booker was stopped in 2019, she “bemoaned the interdiction” but told her associates that she was glad authorities didn’t catch her with worse forms of contraband, according to her plea agreement. After Booker’s car was searched, Cox told her to delete messages on her phone and to hide drugs in her apartment complex’s laundry room, according to her plea agreement.

Cox “distributed much of the contraband that [Booker] smuggled in for him to other inmates for profit,” according to his plea agreement. Prosecutors said in a sentencing memorandum that he was one of two key inmates involved, the other being Darnell Smith, a 41-yearold who was sentenced last August to more than five years of prison for his involvement.

On Friday, Chuang issued a time-served sentence to Laurice Norfleet, an outside facilitator who obtained contraband for other conspirators to bring into the prison for her boyfriend, an inmate named Page Boyd, to sell. Norfleet also will serve six months of home detention. Boyd was sentenced to four years in prison for his involvement.