CHRISTIANSTED — Serial offender Dequan J.J. Forde is appealing his eight-month federal prison sentence for marijuana possession to the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia.
Forde, 22, of St. Croix was sentenced on Wednesday to less that one year in prison for marijuana possession with intent to distribute. His attorney, Kia Sears, filed the notice of appeal on Friday.
Forde was remanded into federal custody after pleading guilty under an agreement with prosecutors in June.
A federal judge ruled that he would get credit for time already served at the Golden Grove Adult Correctional Facility, U.S. District Court records indicate.
Forde was arrested on January 31, 2018 after arriving at Henry Rohlsen Airport on an American Airlines flight from Miami.
A routine U.S. Customs inspection found about 20 pounds of marijuana in his suitcase.
While awaiting federal trial, the Virgin Islands Police Department arrested Forde for a home invasion and an armed robbery.
Still, Sears filed a sentencing memorandum in Golden Rock that said Forde had lived on St. Croix his entire two-decade-long life and had no prior criminal history.
SEARS TOWER OF BABBLE
Sears claimed in her memorandum that incarcerating a low-level drug offender in not effective because “the crime is simply committed by someone else.”
The federal public defender suggested that “probation and intensive probation are more effective than jail or prison, respectively, in reducing offending among first-time felons.”
“As such, a sentence of community supervision is more effective than a sentence of continued incarceration,” she wrote.