Cocaine Kingpin Rayful Edmond III Granted A Sentence Reduction

Former cocaine kingpin Rayful Edmond III was granted a reduced sentence on Tuesday. He had been sentenced to life in the 1980s.

U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan ruled to reduce Edmond’s life prison sentence to 20 years. The judge cited Edmond’s cooperation with prosecutors as the reason for the sentence reduction. Edmond has helped prosecutors in several drug and homicide cases over the past two decades in Washington D.C., North Carolina, and Pennsylvania.

The 56-year-old has been incarcerated for 31 years. Despite the judge’s ruling, Edmond will likely remain jailed due to his separate 30-year prison sentence pending in Pennsylvania for dealing drugs out of a federal prison in the state. As of now, it is unclear whether the 11 years Edmond has served in addition to his newly reduced 20-year D.C. sentence will apply to the Pennsylvania case.

In 2019, federal prosecutors filed a court motion for Edmond’s release from prison to reward his work as an informant. They later recommended that his sentence be reduced to 40 years. His lawyers argued that Edmond’s cooperation deserved a much bigger reduction. Judge Sullivan ultimately agreed on 20 years.

Edmond was convicted in 1989 of overseeing a massive drug operation that brought D.C. around 1,700 pounds of cocaine each month. Authorities have estimated that he was bringing in nearly $2 million a week between 1985 and 1989. His mother, Constance D. Perry, was also charged with helping him to deal drugs. He began cooperating in 1997 to assist his mother with getting released. From 1998 to 2014, Edmond’s cooperation resulted in the arrest and conviction of over 100 drug dealers. He also assisted in undercover sting operations, testified as a government witness in trafficking trials and two homicide trials.