A cigarette dealing kingpin who has been in jail for over six years may finally get out over a "lack of clarity" in tobacco laws. Rodney Morrison, 43, has been running a multimillion dollar tobacco business from behind bars, while prosecutors have been trying to convict him on charges of murder and racketeering. Prosecutors say he is one of the state's biggest dealers of untaxed cigarettes, which he sold from the Poospatuck Indian Reservation on Long Island.
But Federal Judge Denis R. Hurley has acquitted him of the rackateering charges, reversing his own previous ruling, saying that "too many elements of state laws on reservation tobacco sales were unsettled to prosecute someone for violating the rules." And because Morrison has previously been acquitted of murder, arson and robbery, there is a likely chance he'll be released from prison soon, even if a gun possession charge sticks.
Reservation stores sold more than 24 million cartons of cigarettes in 2009, about one out of every three packs sold in NY, according to the AP; tribes refuse to collect taxes on the sales, allowing them to sell at a huge discount, leaving them immune to state tax increases. Morrison ran his business from behind bars, organizing payments, cutting deals to sell new brands, dictating instructions on what employees should wear and how to position cartons on the shelf. "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.
