Armed Drug Dealer Sentenced to 30 Years
Jacksonville, FL – United States Attorney Robert E. O’Neill announces that U.S. District Judge Marcia Morales Howard today sentenced Elmario Clay (38, Jacksonville) to thirty years in federal prison for conspiracy to distribute cocaine base, possession of a firearm in furtherance of a drug trafficking crime and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon.
Clay pled guilty on September 6, 2011 and has been in custody since his arrest on January 12, 2011.
According to court documents, Clay was responsible for the distribution of over two kilograms of cocaine base during the past several years in Jacksonville. He frequently carried firearms when he distributed cocaine base or collected debts. Clay was in possession of a Glock pistol when he was arrested on January 12, 2011. Judge Howard found that Clay was an armed career offender based upon his prior convictions for sale of cocaine, resisting an officer with violence and trafficking in cocaine.
This case was investigated by the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office Gun Crime Unit and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. It was prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorneys Dineen Baker and Frank Talbot.
It is another case prosecuted as a part of the Department of Justice’s Project Safe Neighborhoods
program – a nationwide, gun-violence reduction strategy led by ATF. United States Attorney Robert E. O’Neill, along with Virginia O’Brien, Special Agent in Charge, ATF, is coordinating the Project Safe Neighborhoods effort here in the Middle District of Florida in cooperation with federal, state, and local law enforcement officials.
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