Attorneys for Angelos vow to keep fighting sentence

Attorneys for a 26-year-old man, convicted and sentenced to serve 55 years for selling marijuana with a firearm, said they will keep fighting the sentence and expect to take the case to the U.S. Supreme Court.

"We're a long ways from done," said Jerome Mooney, attorney for convicted drug dealer and aspiring rap producer Weldon Angelos. "We're not ready to roll over and quit."

Mooney said he was disappointed when the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday upheld the 55-year conviction of Angelos under a federal minimum-mandatory sentence guideline set out by Congress for those who are caught dealing drugs while in possession of a firearm.

The case has become a rallying point for opponents of federal minimum-mandatory sentences. University of Utah law professor Erik Luna, who argued as co-council with Mooney before the 10th Circuit last November, said 55 years for a first-time drug offense is not what the minimum-mandatory law was supposed to do — it was supposed to target big-time drug dealers.

Sister Lisa Angelos said she heard the news about the ruling on her way home Monday evening and became so emotionally upset that she had to pull over and throw up. She said her family has dealt with repeated disappointment.

"It's pretty devastating," she said. "First we had the trial, then we had the sentencing and then we had the appeal. It's like I lost my brother three times."

Angelos was convicted by a federal jury in 2004 for selling small amounts of marijuana to an undercover officer. During two of those deals, Angelos had a gun in his possession. Luna argued that the U.S. Sentencing Commission deemed such crimes as worthy of a six-year sentence, and if the prosecutors had avoided stacking the sentences, it could have given Angelos a five-year mandatory sentence.

U.S. District Judge Paul Cassell noted his concern for the sentencing guidelines when he sentenced Angelos, calling the sentence he felt he was forced to impose "unjust, cruel and irrational."

But the three-judge panel of appellate judges disagreed, saying it was Congress' intent to "severely punish criminals who repeatedly possess firearms in connection with drug-trafficking crimes." The judges also stated they felt Cassell did not fully take into consideration Congress' intent for severe punishment for armed drug dealers.

Several legal figures echoed Cassell's concern, including a friend of the court "amicus" brief filed by former U.S. attorneys general Janet Reno, Benjamin Civiletti, Griffin Bell and Nicholas Katzenbach and nearly 160 other ex-Justice Department officials and federal judges.