Accused Chad Brown gang triggerman will serve full sentence, judge rules
PROVIDENCE – A federal judge has rejected a Chad Brown gang member’s effort to get nine months trimmed from the time he’s serving for his part in terrorizing the city with shootings and drug trafficking.
U.S. District Court Chief Judge John J. McConnell Jr. denied Keishon Johnson’s motion to have his 12-year sentence adjusted for time he spent in state prison, saying the U.S. Bureau of Prisons got it right.
Johnson, 33, had asked the court to shave nine months off his term for time he says he served in state custody. He is being held at Hazelton, a federal penitentiary in Pennsylvania, with a release date of April 9, 2029.
Instead, McConnell determined that Johnson is not entitled to relief. McConnell’s order rejecting his request did not reference a video produced by federal prosecutors opposing his efforts. Taken at the Donald W. Wyatt Detention Facility, the video shows Johnson and fellow Chad Brown gang members taunting rivals, threatening “snitches” and boasting about how soon they would be back on the street.
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Johnson was joined by his brother Kendrick Johnson, 40, and Delacey Andrade, 28, in the video authorities say was broadcast via Facebook live. Speaking from inside a cell block at Wyatt the day after they were sentenced for running the gang as a criminal enterprise, the men flashed gang signs as they goaded East Side gang members and promised to root out rats.
“[Expletive] the East Side until the day I die,” Keishon Johnson said into the tablet computer at the Central Falls prison.
“I’m a big gangster.” “I’m from Cutthroats” – a reference to Chad Brown gang members. “I’m 90% of the shootings in the whole town.” “You [racial slur]s in trouble," Keishon continued.
Prosecutors tried to use the words captured in the footage against him.
“Twenty-four hours after being sentenced, the defendant made abundantly clear the fast life was for him and he has no intention of leaving it behind,” Assistant U.S. Attorney John P. McAdams said in court papers opposing Keishon Johnson’s motion. “He is a danger to the community and has done nothing since his sentencing to alleviate the court’s and the government’s concerns on that point.”
Keishon Johnson was triggerman in rash of gang-related murders
McConnell sentenced the men on July 26, decrying gun violence that had gripped the city since 2005 and escalated in 2013, when a Chad Brown member was shot to death and two East Side murders quickly followed.
“And people are dying namelessly. We’re not even finding their killers. What disrespect that is to someone who has been shot because people aren’t cooperating – not because the police aren’t doing their work,” McConnell said.
McConnell sentenced Keishon Johnson, who prosecutors identified as the triggerman, to a 12-year term, the maximum he faced after pleading guilty. He received credit for time he served since the group’s arrest in 2018.
McConnell’s order also did not speak to Johnson’s request that he not be sent to the Houston House in Pawtucket as the end of his sentence nears for fear he would be targeted by rivals from East Side gangs in Providence. His associate, Napoleon Andrade, was gunned down outside reentry center in 2019 in a murder that remains unsolved.
Known as "Nappy,' Andrade had a violent record that included a home invasion and robbery of an elderly associate of the Gambino crime family, one of the "Five Families" of organized crime in New York.
This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: RI Chad Brown gang member denied shorter sentence, release date in 2029
