Two men convicted of local gang-related activity pleaded guilty to threatening violence against another inmate and his family. In U.S. District Court on May 23, Judge Norman K. Moon sentenced Terrance Kenneth Suggs, Jr. and Timothy Wayne Jason Lee Mawyer to an additional year in prison following their current sentences.
Suggs was previously convicted in a Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization (RICO) case relating to the Charlottesville drug dealer and gang leader Louis Antonio Bryant, who was sentenced to life in prison last August.
Serving time in the Central Virginia Regional Jail in Orange, Suggs and Mawyer (convicted for assisting a 2004 escape attempt) were overheard making verbal threats to injure and kill fellow-inmate Yah Yah Veney, who was cooperating with federal authorities seeking RICO charges against Suggs. Suggs told Veney that he would have his “people” from Philadelphia come to Virginia to kill Veney’s family, according to an interview conducted by an Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) agent investigating the case. Mawyer, who did not have any problems with Veney prior to Suggs’ arrival in prison, also started making threats toward Veney when Suggs started calling him a “snitch” and a “rat.” According to the ATF agent, Veney had worn a recording device in prison to obtain information for an undisclosed government agency.
On May 1, Suggs filed a handwritten motion to dismiss, arguing “To hold that every incident involving contact between inmates creates a federal criminal indictment even in the absence of injury, trivializes the nation’s fundamental document.” Judge Moon denied his request.
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