A former correctional officer will serve an 18-month prison sentence for buying guns for the head of a multimillion-dollar Jacksonville pot ring, a federal judge has decided.
Desmond Maxwell, 29, could have faced up to 25 years behind bars after pleading guilty to conspiring to straw-purchase weapons.
Instead, he received a sentence February 25 at the low end of a range of punishments for members of the group whose leader, Nathaniel Hatcher, is locked up for 35 years.
This photo of cash being counted on a table beside marijuana and a pistol was part of a federal drug conspiracy complaint filed in 2024 against a member of Nathaniel Hatcher’s pot ring.
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Senior U.S. District Judge Harvey Schlesigner told Maxwell he “got the biggest break of your life” when Maxwell was charged separately from others in Hatcher’s double-digit group, whose convictions for the drug conspiracy or an October 2023 shooting on Interstate 95 triggered stiff mandatory minimum terms.
Hatcher ran a circle whose members bought marijuana from growers in California, flew it home to Jacksonville and stored and distributed it through short-term rentals like Airbnb homes in areas including Riverside and San Marco.
Hatcher signed a plea agreement in September that acknowledged conspiring to distribute more than a ton of pot and said he personally received $2.2 million from the ring’s business.
To keep the inventory safe, Hatcher had recruited Maxwell to legally buy guns for him that couldn’t be traced to any crime. Maxwell went to licensed gun dealers, bought firearms that Hatcher had picked out and signed required paperwork that said Maxwell was buying them for his own use, said court records that said Hatcher paid for the weapons.
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Defense attorney Kathryn Sheldon told Schlesinger that Maxwell had acted out of misguided friendship, collecting maybe $50 or $100 total for a set of steps that had made him a defendant in federal court.
But Assistant U.S. Attorney Elisibeth Adams said that by signing that he was the real gun-buyer, Maxwell had lied repeatedly on government records and handed over weapons to a man he knew was trafficking illegal drugs.
Maxwell bought or tried to buy a total of seven guns in multiple purchases, Adams said, the last attempt failing because he had been flagged in government databases as being under criminal investigation.
Maxwell quickly cooperated with investigators after being arrested in February 2024 and testified to a grand jury, the judge was told. Adams recommended that Schlesinger deviate from a guideline recommendation of about eight to 10 years down to a little more than five to six years because of his “substantial assistance.”
Sheldon, a public defender, argued for probation, with about 25 of Maxwell’s friends, relatives and fraternity brothers filling the courtroom to support him, some telling the judge about his volunteer work coaching youth football and helping at The Freedom Church of Jacksonville, where he is a member.
Sheldon tried to contrast Maxwell’s guideline sentence with the 60-day jail term and two-year probation ordered in 2024 for former Jacksonville police officer Christopher Barr, who was prosecuted in state court for giving Hatcher information from police databases that Hatcher’s group later used to shoot a rival on I-95 in St. Johns County. Sheldon said Barr, like her client, apparently hadn’t intended to do anything more than a favor for a friend and wasn’t aware of how information he released would be used.
No guns bought in Maxwell’s name have been linked to the I-95 shooting.
Adams rejected a comparison of Barr and Maxwell, saying the latter helped Hatcher repeatedly over months. The prosecutor also said Barr’s actions had been “egregious” and that the outcome of the state court case was inadequate.
This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Ex-jailer gets prison for buying guns for Jacksonville pot ring boss