NY Smoke Shop Owner Could be Freed

NY Smoke Shop Owner Could be Freed

NEW YORK (AP) — One of the state's most notorious dealers in untaxed cigarettes may soon be freed from prison, thanks to what a judge called a "lack of clarity" in New York laws regulating tobacco sold on Indian reservations.

For six years, Rodney Morrison oversaw his multimillion-dollar tobacco business from behind bars while prosecutors tried to persuade a court that he was a murderer and a racketeer.

Even after a jury held that his operation was a criminal enterprise, Morrison continued to sell millions of cartons of cigarettes from the Poospatuck Reservation on Long Island, sales records show.

"Your husband is on the phone trying to run a business from inside the jail," he lamented to his wife in one recorded jailhouse call, according to a transcript contained in a court file. In other calls, taped by federal prison officials and obtained by city lawyers, Morrison dictated instructions on what employees should wear and how to position cartons on the shelves.

Morrison's days of overseeing his affairs from a cell may be ending.

Combined with earlier acquittals on murder, robbery and arson charges, the ruling potentially clears the way for a homecoming for Morrison, a former cocaine dealer who made a Wall Street-sized fortune after he switched to cigarettes.

http://www.reznetnews.org/article/ny-smoke-shop-owner-could-be-freed-44640