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Assistant Bergen County Prosecutor Keith Travers (STORY / PHOTOS: CLIFFVIEW PILOT Courthouse Reporter Mary K. Miraglia)
“Everything was my fault,” Marcus Carter, 36, told the judge while requesting leniency for 25-year-old Charmaine Coit.
Two officers with the Bergen County Sheriff’s Intelligence Unit quickly sniffed out the conspiracy last May, recording more than two dozen phone conversations between the Staten Island couple — including one in which defense attorney Robert N. Kalisch Jr. said Coit refers to a mugshot of Carter in CLIFFVIEW PILOT (see below).
“It looks like you got beat up,” she says to him on the recording, which prosecutors were prepared to play for a jury if the case went to trial.
Superior Court Judge Edward A. Jerejan had been reviewing the calls, one by one, to determine their admissibility when Coit took a plea yesterday.
Carter then admitted this morning that he had two handguns and more than a quarter-pound of cocaine when he led a U.S. marshal on a chase through Route 3 traffic in East Rutherford 18 months ago.
Defense attorney Robert N. Kalisch Jr. (STORY / PHOTOS: CLIFFVIEW PILOT Courthouse Reporter Mary K. Miraglia)
As a result, he’s looking at a maximum prison term of 15 years with no parole eligibility for at least 10.
Coit, who has a young child, pleaded guilty late yesterday after three days of pre-trial motions that included 25 calls recorded from the jail.
They were a mix of friendly and sometimes romantic conversation, profanity, sexual references and disputes that all centered on a wide-ranging conspiracy to have Coit take over Carter’s cocaine distribution business.
The two are heard discussing how many packaging bags to buy, where to get cocaine and how to package and sell it. Their talk also becomes contentious, especially involving money transfers into Coit’s bank account to raise bail for Carter, skirting the law.
“It’s your money, they can’t do anything,” Carter tells Coit at one point.
“TD Bank wants to know where the money is coming from,” she replies, anxiously.
On another call he tells her to register a car “in Michael’s name” and she angrily says to “leave Michael out of this.”
Coit’s attorney, James Orlando, identified Michael as Coit’s brother.
Charmaine Coit (STORY / PHOTOS: CLIFFVIEW PILOT Courthouse Reporter Mary K. Miraglia)
In return for her plea to one count of conspiring with Carter, Assistant Bergen County Prosecutor Keith Travers agreed to treat the crime as a third-degree offense. This reduced her maximum possible sentence from 5 to 10 years to no more than five.
“Your attorney is going to argue for three [years] flat,” the judge told Coit.
That time could be reduced even further — to 364 days in the county jail or even straight probation when all is said and done.
Coit, who last year served six months in the Hudson County Correctional Facility for an unrelated offense, remained free without bail.
Carter, meanwhile, has been at the Bergen County Jail since the federal marshal chased him down outside the Homestead Village/Extended Stay on eastbound Route 3 in August 2013. His bail is $117,500.
Authorities at the time said Carter — who was wanted in New York — was carrying two Raven Arms .25-caliber handguns, hollow-nose bullets and 123 bags of cocaine that would have sold for roughly $7,500 on the street when he took off across the highway and was caught.
Marcus Carter (MUGSHOT: Courtesy BERGEN COUNTY SHERIFF)
Travers offered Carter 13 years in prison without parole for at least nine years last October. Because his record mandated extended-term sentencing, an indictment count for possession of more than half an ounce but less than five ounces of cocaine with the intent to sell it must be elevated to first-degree status for sentencing.
He also had three Graves Act charges for weapons possession, and as a convicted “certain persons” felon was prohibited from having possession of a gun under any circumstances.
On top of that, he was charged with possession of firearms during the commission of a drug crime.
The judge agreed today to let Carter return to New York as soon as possible to clear up three pending cases there and to sentence him in absentia so that he doesn’t have to return to Hackensack.
Carter got an added bonus: Jerejian also agreed that he could serve his sentence at the same time as any prison time he receives in New York.
Had he been convicted at trial, prosecutors said, Carter could have faced up to 40 years.
Assistant Bergen County Prosecutor Keith Travers, defense attorney Robert N. Kalisch Jr., Marcus Carter (STORY / PHOTOS: CLIFFVIEW PILOT Courthouse Reporter Mary K. Miraglia)
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