A second Iowa man convicted on gun and drug charges in connection to a stop on Interstate 80 near Lincoln last year will serve more than 20 years in prison.
Jarell Samuels, 34, was found guilty in November of possession of a firearm by a prohibited person and possession of more than a pound of marijuana after a Lancaster County sheriff's deputy stopped the Nissan Rogue he was driving on I-80 in June 2020.
Judge Ryan Post on Thursday sentenced Samuels to 20 to 26 years in prison on the charges. Samuels was convicted as a habitual criminal on both charges, a designation that carries a minimum 10-year hard-time sentence in Nebraska.
Altogether, Samuels will serve at least 20 years before he's eligible for release.
People are also reading…
The sentence comes less than two months after 28-year-old Temarco Pope Jr., the front-seat passenger of the Nissan, was sentenced to 36 to 50 years in prison on charges of second-offense possession of a firearm by a prohibited person and possession of more than a pound of marijuana.
The case started out as a traffic stop for speeding June 5, 2020, near the U.S. 77 exit on the edge of Lincoln. The deputy stopped the Nissan going 10 mph over the speed limit.
According to the affidavit for Pope's arrest, Samuels consented to a search, which turned up a loaded Kahr CM9 handgun under the floor mat where Pope had been sitting and just less than 2 pounds of raw marijuana in dispensary-style containers in a garbage bag in the cargo area.
Post in November sentenced Pope to 35 to 48 years on the gun charge and one to two years more on the marijuana charge. Thursday, the district court judge sentenced Samuels to 10 to 15 years on the gun charge and 10 to 11 years for possessing marijuana, both enhanced by the habitual criminal designation.
Nearly 32% of the latest defendants convicted on the habitual criminal enhancement in Nebraska are Black — an even starker racial disparity than already exists within state prisons.
Michael Kosmicki, Samuels' attorney, described the prosecution's use of the enhancement in this case as one that goes against the intent of the law.Â
In Nebraska, prosecutors can seek the enhancement if a defendant has been convicted of two previous felonies of any variety in any state. Kosmicki said the legal device, which takes the sentencing power out a judge's hands by introducing a 10-year minimum, was only created for "the worst of the worst" criminals.
"It's not the court's fault," Kosmicki said. "The judge's hands are tied. ... What happens is it's used a lot in non-violent cases, like these drug cases and property crimes and things like that.
"So it's the prosecutors using it not for the worst of the worst. They kind of use it whenever they find out someone has two prior convictions on anything."
Lancaster County Attorney Pat Condon defended the lengthy sentence for Pope in November, noting the county has been experiencing a higher incidence of gun-related crime, such as robbery, felony assault and homicide, oftentimes because individuals are engaged in the use and distribution of marijuana, he said.
"And the nexus between marijuana, guns and violence is increasingly apparent," Condon said.
Since Condon took office in 2018, the Lancaster County Attorney's Office has sought the enhancement less often than it did under his predecessor, Joe Kelly.
Still, Lancaster County has led the state in habitual criminal convictions since 2011, outpacing Douglas County, which has about 250,000 more residents.Â
Samuels, who had been held at the Lancaster County Jail on a $100,000 percentage bond since his arrest in 2020, was given credit for 580 days served. He won't be eligible for parole until at least 2040.
Andrew Wegley's favorite stories of 2021
These five articles all had different subjects and outcomes. But each of them aimed to either tell a story that wasn't being told elsewhere or bring something new to the local conversation in the realm of criminal justice.Â
This story is important because it highlights intense racial disparities that seem stark even against the backdrop of Nebraska's prison system…
This story was unique because it traffics in the gray area between what we say and what we mean — two increasingly different realities in the …
This story was important because it kept top-of-mind a local tragedy that had long fallen out of the news cycle. Local authorities had for mon…
This story was the first of several Journal Star articles that aimed to hold the Nebraska State Patrol accountable in the wake of an evidence …
This story, published in the aftermath of a week of protests at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, examines the campus police department's sp…