Press Releases
FEDERAL GRAND JURY INDICTS NEW ORLEANS MEN ON CHARGES INVOLVING CARJACKINGS
January 18, 2008
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
TY PAYTON, age 19, and JAMES DAVIS, age 17, both residents of New Orleans, were indicted by a Federal Grand Jury for conspiracy to use and carry firearms during a crime of violence, announced U. S. Attorney Jim Letten.
According to the indictment, TY PAYTON is charged with conspiring with two juveniles to use firearms during two carjackings that occurred on July 21, 2006, the first in Jefferson Parish and the second in Orleans Parish. In the first incident, the indictment charges that PAYTON, along with the juveniles, carjacked an eighty-seven-year-old woman. It is alleged that as the woman returned to her home in Jefferson in her 2001 Nissan Sentra, she was accosted at gun-point and threatened unless she gave up the keys to her vehicle.
According to the indictment, shortly thereafter, PAYTON, along with the juveniles, crashed the Sentra in New Orleans and then carjacked a 1997 Chevy Malibu belonging to a twenty-five-year-old woman who was also threatened at gun-point.
PAYTON faces a maximum statutory jail term of twenty (20) years on the conspiracy and a possible maximum jail term of fifteen (15) years on each of the carjacking counts.
According to the indictment, JAMES DAVIS is also charged with conspiring with one of the same juveniles who allegedly acted earlier with PAYTON, in a separate March 17, 2007 carjacking of a 2002 Honda Civic from a teenage couple in Jefferson Parish. DAVIS, like PAYTON, faces a count of conspiracy to use a firearm during a carjacking, which carries a maximum statutory prison term of twenty (20) years, along with the substantive carjacking count, which carries a possible statutory maximum prison term of fifteen (15) years.
The Department of Justice reminds the press and the public that an indictment is a formal accusation and that the defendants are presumed innocent until adjudicated guilty based upon proof beyond a reasonable doubt.
This investigation is being conducted by Special Agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, along with members of the New Orleans Police Department and the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office. The prosecution is being handled by Assistant United States Attorneys, Michael E. McMahon, Mark Miller and Sean Toomey.
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