Kankakee County Man To Serve 23 Years In Prison for Repeated Crack Cocaine Trafficking

Urbana, Ill. -- Edward Dorsey Sr., 42, of St. Anne, Ill., was sentenced yesterday to a term of 276 months (23 years) in federal prison for trafficking crack cocaine, as announced by Jim Lewis, U.S. Attorney for the Central District of Illinois. Dorsey was also ordered to remain on supervised release for a period of eight years following completion of his prison sentence. U.S. District Judge Colin S. Bruce sentenced Dorsey within the advisory federal sentencing guideline range after finding that Dorsey was a career offender with two prior felony drug trafficking convictions. In fact, at the time he committed these offenses, Dorsey had five prior felony drug convictions and was serving a three-year term of supervised release for a prior federal drug crime.

On August 22, 2014, Dorsey appeared before U.S. Magistrate Judge David G. Bernthal and pleaded guilty to three separate counts of distributing crack cocaine in Kankakee County.  During the plea, Dorsey admitted distributing more than 28 grams (approximately one ounce) of crack cocaine on two occasions, Nov. 21 and Dec. 18, 2013, and also distributing crack cocaine on Dec. 10, 2013.  At sentencing, the United States presented evidence that, during his drug trafficking activities, Dorsey threatened to shoot any law enforcement officers investigating him.  Dorsey has been in the custody of the U.S. Marshals Service since his arrest in this case.

A petition to revoke Dorsey’s federal supervised release remains pending.  Dorsey was on federal supervised release because his prior 10-year federal sentence had been reduced to time served (three years and eight months) after the U.S. Supreme Court concluded that he should have been sentenced under the more lenient penalties of the Fair Sentencing Act. If Dorsey’s supervised release is revoked, he could be sentenced to up to three years in prison in addition to his new sentence for the drug trafficking charges.

The charges are the result of an investigation by the Kankakee Area Project Safe Neighborhoods Task Force, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, the Kankakee Police Department, and the Kankakee County Major Crimes Task Force.  The case is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Eugene L. Miller.