Judge vacates cigarette magnate's 2008 conviction

A federal judge has vacated the 2008 racketeering conviction of former Poospatuck cigarette magnate Rodney Morrison for illegally selling untaxed cigarettes, a ruling that could mean Morrison soon will be freed from jail.

In a ruling late Friday, U.S. District Judge Denis Hurley said he had erred in agreeing that Morrison had been fairly convicted of racketeering for bootlegging millions of dollars in untaxed cigarettes from the Mastic reservation.

Morrison has been held without bail for six years after Hurley ruled he was a danger to the community and refused to accept a $56-million bail package Morrison offered to post.

Daniel Nobel, an attorney for Morrison, said Saturday that his client is "obviously very pleased" with Hurley's decision. In Morrison's view, his lawyer said, "justice has been done."

Nobel said that the judge's decision was based "not on a technicality, but on a fundamental [constitutional] right of due process" - a defendant's right to an understanding of what is legal and what is not legal, Nobel said.

Nobel said he could not comment on what plans Morrison has if he gets out of jail.

Asked if the government will appeal Hurley's ruling, Robert Nardoza, a spokesman for U.S. Attorney Benton Campbell, said the office "will review Judge Hurley's ruling and consider available options."

In Friday's 20-page decision, Hurley said his turnabout came because of an unrelated federal appeals court decision earlier this year that appeared to question whether people - such as Morrison - who sell cigarettes on Indian reservations had adequate notice that they might be breaking the law.

In that case, Hurley said, the appeals court appeared to be asking a state court to clarify whether state law on untaxed cigarette sales on reservations is ambiguous.

Morrison had been scheduled to be sentenced on April 30 on convictions for racketeering and weapons possession, with a possible enhancement of the sentence for murder and robbery. He faced a possible 30-year sentence.

After a two-month trial in 2008, a jury convicted Morrison of racketeering conspiracy in the commission of cigarette bootlegging from his Peace Pipe Smoke Shop on the Mastic reservation, as well as illegal possession of a gun.

The jury acquitted him of murder in connection with the killing of Sherwin Henry, a rival smoke shop owner; and robbery and arson.

But Hurley, exercising his judicial prerogative, had said he intended to take the slaying and robbery into account in sentencing Morrison.

In Friday's decision, Hurley wrote that because he previously had ruled those alleged violent crimes were done to protect or were to further the cigarette racketeering, he no longer could consider them in sentencing Morrison.

"Those acts . . . were tethered to [the racketeering conviction] now vacated," Hurley wrote in his decision.