CLARKSVILLE, TN (CLARKSVILLE NOW) – The final six defendants in a RICO conspiracy operating out of Clarksville were sentenced last week in U.S. District Court, according to a release from U.S. Attorney Mark H. Wildasin for the Middle District of Tennessee.
This multi-year investigation resulted in federal charges against 32 gang members and associates, including 12 in this RICO indictment, the release said.
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For more than a decade, Gangster Disciples members engaged in drug trafficking, intimidated witnesses to prevent them from cooperating with law enforcement, protected the gang’s drug territory, financed the drug trafficking enterprise, and targeted members of rival gangs and others through murders, attempted murders and other shootings.
Those sentenced this week include:
- Maurice Burks, 36, of Hopkinsville, Kentucky, who was sentenced to 35 years in prison
- Brandon Hardison, 36, of Nashville, who was sentenced to life plus 20 years in prison
- Lamar Warfield, 34, of Guthrie, Kentucky, was sentenced to 22 and a half years in prison
- Elance Lucas, 33, of Guthrie, Kentucky, was sentenced to 19 ½ years in prison
- Lawrence Mitchell, 38, of Clarksville, was sentenced to 10 years in prison
- James Luke, 36, of Clarksville, was sentenced to 8 1/3 years in prison
Court documents revealed that members of this gang planned and carried out murders and numerous shootings and assaults in the Clarksville area. These convictions, which were the product of trial verdicts and/or guilty pleas, notably included convictions related to four cold-case homicides in Clarksville:
- Murder of a Bloods gang member in 2012
- Murder of a Gangster Disciples associate and the related murder of his girlfriend, who was a witness to the murder in 2012
- Murder of a person who had “disrespected” members of the Gangster Disciples at a party in Guthrie in 2014
Several of these defendants also held local and regional positions of authority in the gang, the release added. Their arrest and prosecution resulted in the dismantling of the gang’s leadership structure in middle Tennessee.
Multiple local and state agencies have been working the case over the past decade.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Ben Schrader of the Middle District of Tennessee, Assistant U.S. Attorney Shauna Hale of the Middle District of Florida, and Trial Attorneys Ivana Nizich and Gerald A. Collins of the Criminal Division’s Organized Crime and Gang Section prosecuted the case.
