Tower Suites co-owner Shervington ‘Big Head’ Lovell was sentenced to 11 years in prison yesterday by United States Judge Paul G. Gardephe, months after he had pleaded guilty to drug trafficking.
Lovell, who has been in US custody since 2018 after being extradited from Jamaica, had pleaded guilty in November last year.
His sentence falls short by six years of the minimum that United States Attorney Audrey Strauss had petitioned for.
She had referred to Lovell as “a sophisticated international drug trafficker” and had asked that he be sentenced to between 17 and 21 years in prison as according to Strauss he had invested some US$100,000 to traffic in more than one tonne of cocaine from South America to Europe.
“The defendant is a large-scale international narcotics trafficker who led a conspiracy to ship enormous quantities of deadly drugs across an ocean for distribution in Europe and elsewhere. The defendant, and the other leaders of this conspiracy, endangered the crew members’ lives to transport narcotics that would endanger even more lives once distributed. The defendant does not meaningfully dispute that he did all of this for his own monetary gain. The defendant makes no meaningful attempt to justify his actions, in spite of his obvious assets and advantages in life,” Strauss had said in a 10-page submission to Judge Gardephe.
On the other hand, the attorney for Lovell had asked not only for the judge to be lenient with his client but for him to serve his time at Fort Dix Federal Correctional Facility in New Jersey to afford him the opportunity to pursue vocational training in horticulture.
Defence attorney Eon Smith, in a sentencing submission, had claimed his client has a background in farming but never had any formal education in that field and therefore wants to prepare himself for re-entry into society while serving his sentence.
He described Lovell as a loving father of eight children. There were several hand written letters from Lovell’s relatives and friends that were sent to the judge speaking to his character and his generosity as he was known to always give to the needy.
Lovell admitted that from about April 2018 to July 2018 in Guyana, Jamaica, Colombia, on the high seas and elsewhere, he along with three other named men and others who are known and unknown intentionally and knowingly combined, conspired, confederated and agreed with each other to violate the maritime drug and enforcement law of the US.
It was said that while on board a vessel subject to the jurisdiction of the US they knowingly and intentionally possessed with intent to distribute a controlled substance in violation of Title 46, United States Code, and Section 70503 (a) (1).
As a result of committing the offence, Lovell and the other accused are subject to forfeiture to the US of all controlled substances, all raw material products of any kind, all listed chemicals, all drug manufacturing equipment, all encapsulating machines and all gelatin capsules. Also all conveyances, including aircraft, vehicles or vessels, all books, records and research, including formulas, microfilms, tapes and data, properties, including any right title and interest, cash and any firearms are all to be forfeited.
Lovell was nabbed in 2018 following months of investigation and planning by the US Drug Enforcement Administration, which included him meeting with confidential sources (CSs) in Georgetown and Jamaica to allegedly plan a cocaine shipment to the Netherlands.
It was following the interception of a cocaine-laden vessel, 350 miles off Diamond Valley, Barbados on July 27th, 2018 that a sealed US arrest warrant was issued for Lovell. He and his co-conspirators were allegedly hoping to traffic the 624 kilogrammes of cocaine to the Netherlands via the Azores.
Lovell and Colombian Ricardo Ramirez were arrested along with a Surinamese national on October 25th, 2018, at the Norman Manley International Airport in Jamaica on drug trafficking charges.
