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It would become the second capital case tried in the history of New Jersey’s federal courts; the other was in 2007.
Formal notice of intent to seek capital punishment was presented in court today to 30-year-old Farad Roland, leader of the South Side Cartel gang, U.S. Attorney Paul J. Fishman said.
Roland and two-codefendants are named in a 24-count federal RICO indictment charing them with six murders, as well as kidnapping, robbery, carjacking, drug conspiracy and other violent acts “in aid of racketeering.”
A U.S. District judge set a trial date for Jan. 11, 2016.
Five of the six homicides are death-penalty eligible, Fishman said.
If Roland is convicted of any of those five, a separate death-penalty phase would follow, he said.
If a jury rejects capital punishment, he would be sentenced to life without parole.
Holder directed his office not to seek the death penalty against Roland’s codefendants, Mark Williams, 32, and Malik Lowery, 33, who are each charged with one death-penalty eligible murder.
All three remain held without bail.
According to Fishman:
“The South Side Cartel, a sub-set of the Bloods street gang, operated primarily on Hawthorne Avenue in Newark since 2002.
“Originally a neighborhood-based gang whose main activities were selling drugs and committing violent acts to aid the drug trafficking business, many of the gang’s members were officially brought into the Bloods gang in 2002 and 2003.
“As early as 2005, the gang was officially named The South Side Cartel. The gang’s center of activities were apartments located inside buildings dubbed “the Twin Towers,” located at 496500 Hawthorne Avenue, the location of repeated narcotics and gun arrests by local law enforcement between 2002 and 2010.
“Many of the South Side Cartel members had tattoos showing these buildings and the logo of ‘SSC’ representing the gang’s initials.
“At its peak, the South Side Cartel had about 20 members or associates, many of whom have since been killed in gang-related murders or who are serving prison sentences in state and federal prisons for gang-related crimes.”
The indictment charges the trio with:
• the Dec. 4, 2003 murder of a rival gang member in a drive-by shooting;
• the Feb. 23, 2005 murder of a fellow South Side Cartel member who was about to be arrested, in order to keep him from cooperating with law enforcement and implicating Farad Roland in a robbery/murder that occurred a few days earlier;
• the Oct. 20, 2007 murder of a fellow South Side Cartel member who had fallen into disfavor with the gang; and 4) the retaliation murders of two people on March 27, 2008, outside the Oasis Bar located on Lyons Avenue in Newark.
All of the victims were shot to death.
The superseding indictment also charges the defendants with carjacking, assault with dangerous weapons “in furtherance of racketeering” for shootings of rival gang members and a conspiracy to distribute heroin and crack cocaine, among other charges.
Fishman credited special agents of the FBI, the Newark Police Department and Acting Essex County Prosecutor Carolyn Murray, a former federal prosecutor, with the investigation leading to the indictment.
The government is represented by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Robert Frazer and Andrew Bruck of Fishman’s Organized Crime/Gangs Unit in Newark.
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