United States v. Phillips, CRIMINAL ACTION NO. 07-CR-549-1
| Decision Date | 08 June 2021 |
| Docket Number | CRIMINAL ACTION NO. 07-CR-549-1 |
| Parties | UNITED STATES OF AMERICA v. MAURICE PHILLIPS |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Eastern District of Pennsylvania |
The instant criminal action is presently before this Court for adjudication of the Motion filed pro se by Defendant Maurice Phillips to Vacate, Set Aside or Correct his sentence pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2255. The Government quite naturally opposes the relief sought and for the reasons discussed below, the motion (as amended) shall be denied.
The motion now before the Court has its genesis in Defendant's 2010 convictions for a long list of serious and heinous crimes1 which were committed over a period of nearly ten years in the course of his having organized and run a large-scale cocaine distribution network known as the Phillips Cocaine Organization or "PCO."
The PCO operated primarily in the metropolitan areas of Philadelphia, Newark, New Jersey, New York, Washington, D.C., Virginia, and Maryland from approximately 1998 until Defendant's arrest in 2007. In the course of his operation of the PCO, Maurice Phillips sold and/or distributed thousands of kilos of cocaine worth tens of millions of dollars, making himself a multi-millionaire in the process.
Because of the large volumes of money which Defendant was acquiring, he required the services of a professional money-launderer to facilitate his purchases of legitimate assets, including real estate and high-end motor vehicles, among others. In late 1998, Defendant was introduced to Chineta Glanville, a professional money launderer, by one of his girlfriends and co-defendants in this action, Chanelle Cunningham. Shortly thereafter, Defendant began using Glanville's services to launder the proceeds of his drug business for himself, Cunningham and two other co-defendants, Lamont and Feanna Smith. Glanville accomplished this objective by, inter alia, creating shell corporations and businesses, bank accounts and fake identification, employment documents and income tax records. Over time, Glanville facilitated Phillips' purchase of a number of residences, businesses, and vehicles, as well as at least one apartment building, trash trucks for a trash hauling business and a high-end clothing boutique in the Atlanta, GA area. Phillips also enjoyed a lavish lifestyle, spending vast sums of money in hosting large parties and weddings, travelling and renting box seats at sporting events, among other activities.
In or around May 2002, agents served search warrants on the homes of Feanna and Lamont Smith and Chinetta Glanville, in the course of which they uncovered and seized, among other things, computers, business records, some $61,000 in cash, and falsified income tax returns prepared by Glanville. Glanville immediately began cooperating with law enforcement authorities and apparently advised Feanna Smith of her cooperation and that she, the Smiths, Phillips and Cunningham were all going to jail. This information was relayed to Defendant and he promptly began planning to have Glanville murdered in order to silence her. Phillips reached out to his cousin, Bryant Phillips, who had recently been released from federal prison after serving a lengthy sentence for bank robbery and was then living in Nashville, TN. Eventually, Defendant reached an agreement with his cousin to kill Glanville in exchange for $18,000.
On June 22, 2002, Defendant wire-transferred $300 to Bryant Phillips under someone else's name to cover the expenses for Bryant's trip from Tennessee to the Philadelphia area. Two days later, Bryant Phillips drove north in his girlfriend's car to Defendant's home in Roselle/Linden, New Jersey. From there, he and Defendant travelled to the Montgomery County, Pennsylvania suburb where Glanville lived and Defendant showed him around the area, including a nearby supermarket and post office parking lot where Defendant told his cousin he should park so he could walk to Glanville's residence. On the trip back to Defendant's home, Defendant stopped at a Federal Express facility in Kenilworth, NJ where Defendant met with an associate who was employed there, later identified as Reginald Smith, ostensibly to pick up a gun. When Defendant returned to the car, he was upset that Smith had not given him a gun but the following morning, Defendant gave his cousin a Federal Express uniform and envelope along with a firearm. Giving him a description of what Glanville looked like, Defendant told Bryant Phillips that Glanville's garage door would be open if she was at home and that he wanted him to kill her at 10 a.m., as he had arranged to have an alibi at that time.
Bryant Phillips did as he was told and drove to the supermarket parking lot shortly before 10 a.m. on June 25, 2002, parked and walked the few blocks to Glanville's house wearing sunglasses and the Federal Express Uniform. Walking into the open garage, Bryant Phillips knocked on the door leading to the interior of the house and it was answered by one Dane King, Glanville's adult godson, who was visiting. He told King that he had a package that he needed to deliver personally to Glanville and King led him down the hallway to Glanville. At that point, Bryant Phillips removed a semi-automatic handgun from beneath his uniform shirt, ordered Glanville to lie on the floor and fired two bullets into the back of her head, killing her. King responded by kicking Phillips in the knee and Phillips emptied the clip of the handgun into King, also killing him. Bryant Phillips then fled the house and drove straight back to Tennessee, disassembling the gun along the way and throwing the parts away at various places along the highways. Defendant had arranged for an associate to meet his cousin at a mall parking lot in Baltimore, MD where he was paid $16,000 in cash for the killings of Glanville and King. Defendant paid the remaining balance of $2,000 to Bryant Phillips by allowing him to take whatever goods he wanted from Defendant's Atlanta, GA clothing boutique.
A little over a year later, Bryant Phillips was arrested in Nashville for statutory rape but, hearing the approaching deputies, he attempted to throw a firearm out of a bedroom window. He was subsequently charged in federal court for the firearm offense and Defendant provided $25,000 for his legal fees through Chanel Cunningham. In a visit from Defendant while Bryant Phillips was incarcerated at a Memphis prison, Bryant suggested that he could provide information about one of Defendant's rival drug dealers to obtain a more favorable prison sentence. Defendant, however, rejected this idea and over time, Bryant had more and more difficulty in communicating with his cousin. Becoming more and more uneasy and fearful that Defendant might tell someone else or the authorities that Bryant had murdered Glanville and King, Bryant Phillips contacted his attorney with the request that he set up a meeting with prosecutors. In a subsequent series of proffer sessions, Bryant Phillips informed law enforcement about his and Defendant's involvement in the Glanville/King murders, eventually entering into a negotiated plea agreement whereby he agreed to plead guilty to committing them and to giving testimony against Defendant. Chanel Cunningham and Feana Smith thereafter also began cooperating and agreed to testify against Defendant as well.
On September 12, 2007 Defendant, along with ten others, was charged in a multi-count grand jury indictment, with, inter alia, the charges of which he was eventually convicted.2 He was arrested the following day and held without bail pending trial which did not begin until January 3, 2010. As outlined above, Defendant was convicted of all of the multiple counts against him, including murder and tampering with a witness, victim, or informant in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1111(a), 1512(a)(1)(C), (a)(3)(A) and aiding and abetting the same in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2; use of interstate commerce facilities in commission of a murder for hire, (18 U.S.C. § 1958); concealment of and conspiracy to commit money laundering in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1956(a)(1)(B)(i) and (h) and aiding and abetting; engaging in a criminal enterprise in violation of 21 U.S.C. §§ 848(b) and (c); and conspiracy to distribute more than 5 kilograms of cocaine under 21 U.S.C. § 846. The penalty phase of the trial commenced on April 19, 2010. It lasted for more than a week, until April 28, 2010, at which time the jury determined to spare Defendant's life and that he should be sentenced to multiple terms of life imprisonment without the possibility of release. On appeal, the Third Circuit determined that, while the Court had erred in failing to give the jury a unanimity instruction on the Continuing Criminal Enterprise charge, it would be in the interests of judicial economy and efficiency to dismiss the conviction on that offense and the remainder of the judgments of conviction and sentences were affirmed. See, United States v. Phillips, No. 10-3706, 589 Fed. Appx. 64, 2014 U.S. App. LEXIS 19795 (3d Cir. Oct. 16, 2014). Although Defendant filed a petition for writ of certiorari to the U.S. Supreme Court, that petition was denied on June 29, 2015. United States v. Phillips, 576 U.S. 1064, 134 S. Ct. 2911, 192 L. Ed.2d 941 (2015). Almost exactly one year later, Defendant filed, pro se, this motion to vacate, correct and/or set aside his sentence pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2255.3
Section 2255 is the federal counterpart to 28 U.S.C. § 2254 governing the filing of petitions for habeas corpus relief from custody pursuant to judgments of State courts. See, United States v. Vancol, 778 F. Supp. 219, 222, n.7 (D. Del. 1991)( that a proceeding which "is brought under 28 U.S.C. Section 2255 is the statutory analogue of habeas corpus for persons in federal custody"). The Supreme Court has observed that the § 2255 statute "was intended to alleviate the burden of...
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