Jury finds 3 accused members of Bloods street gang guilty of racketeering, firearm charges

Three alleged members of the Minneapolis Bloods street gang were convicted Tuesday on charges including racketeering conspiracy and using firearms to carry out a pair of murders.

The guilty verdicts, decided by an anonymous jury of 12 that spent 2 1/2 days deliberating, capped a weekslong trial that featured testimony from fellow Bloods-turned-government cooperators and a slew of law enforcement officials who’ve been behind Minnesota’s ongoing gang crackdown.

Jurors convicted Desean James Solomon, 34, of Richfield on charges of racketeering conspiracy, carrying and using a firearm in a crime of violence, and aiding and abetting. They also convicted Michael Allen Burrell, 44, of St. Paul and Leontawan Holt, 26, of Minneapolis of aiding and abetting and carrying and using a firearm in a crime of violence.

U.S. Attorney Andrew Luger, in a brief news conference Tuesday in St. Paul, said the verdicts made clear that the Bloods “created and brutally enforced a clearly defined set of rules that govern all Bloods members just like traditional organized crime.”

“In this criminal enterprise these rules supersede all criminal laws and social tenets such as respect for human life and public safety,” Luger said.

Messages were left seeking comment from each of the three men convicted Tuesday. At least one attorney confirmed plans to appeal the verdict.

“While we genuinely respect the jury’s efforts, Mr. Solomon, his family and I disagree with the verdict,” said Thomas Plunkett, Solomon’s attorney. “We will have several issues to address on appeal.”

Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara joined Luger and the three prosecutors who tried the case — Assistant U.S. Attorneys Esther Soria, Kristian Weir and Campbell Warner – at a news conference following Tuesday’s verdicts.

“I’m hopeful that this conviction here today sends a message to those families, to those victims, to the residents in our community that have been dealing with unacceptable levels of chronic violence that we will be here to hold those accountable who are causing the most harm in our community,” O’Hara said.

The case represented the rare use by Minnesota federal prosecutors of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) statute to target a Minneapolis street gang. The circa-1970 statute was first deployed to bring down organized crime families on the East Coast.

Tuesday’s guilty verdicts brought the number of convictions under Luger’s gang initiative to 17 of the more than 80 people charged thus far. Another RICO trial targeting the north Minneapolis Highs gang is expected to follow next year, and Luger said Tuesday that additional indictments were on the way.

Witnesses who testified for the government at trial included Bloods associates William Blair, Jamaal Rice, and Jonathan Cade — each of whom had previously been charged and agreed to testify as part of their plea deals. On Tuesday, Luger underlined their descriptions of how the Bloods carried out murders and shootings “both to protect the Bloods’ territory and to attack their rivals on their territory.” They also explained how they risked their lives by cooperating with law enforcement, a deep violation of Bloods rules, he pointed out.

“The testimony at trial was chilling: these gang members behaved just like traditional mob members,” said Luger, who likened the activity to the mafia trials he sat through in New York at the beginning of his career. “They killed others without hesitation and enforced their own internal rules through violence.”

Two homicides, one in June 2020 and another in April 2022, and a pattern of narcotics sales were at the heart of the government’s case against the three alleged Bloods members on trial.

Solomon and Burrell are being charged in connection with a June 2020 gun battle outside the 200 Club in north Minneapolis that saw 100 rounds fired and six people hit, including Burrell.

Burrell is the older brother of Myon Burrell, whose life sentence for murder was commuted in 2020 after he spent nearly two decades in prison. Prosecutors say the 200 Club shootout started when Michael Burrell and Solomon confronted a man who testified against Myon Burrell at both trials held in the murder of 11-year-old Tyesha Edwards in the mid-2000s. Myon Burrell attended Thursday’s closing arguments, and he previously watched multiple days of his older brother’s trial.

Prosecutors said Michael Burrell fired the first shots in an encounter that included a dozen firearms being discharged. Burrell was shot in his buttocks during the exchange, and Solomon fired into the back of a Chevy Tahoe that prosecutors said contained Banks in the passenger seat. Banks was killed after being struck by a single bullet to his head. Mignanelli said forensic scientists concluded the bullet in Banks’ head was fired by the same gun used to fire other spent cartridges linked to Solomon. But Solomon’s attorney disputed whether the bullet that killed Banks was indeed fired by his client. Steven Wolter, Burrell’s attorney, said Burrell’s conflict with the man who twice testified against his brother more than a decade ago was a personal matter and argued that there was “no evidence that Mr. Burrell acted to preserve or enhance his position within the Bloods gang.”

The April 2022 killing was preceded by a brawl inside Williams Pub in Minneapolis’ Uptown neighborhood. There, members of the Bloods encountered a member of the rival Tre Tre Crips who had stabbed a Blood in 2016. Holt threw the first punch at the man before a group of Bloods converged on their rival. Later outside the bar, Holt retrieved a pair of guns from his car and handed one to a juvenile Bloods associate. Solomon meanwhile led a formation of Bloods looking for rivals outside, Soria said. Holt fired the fatal shot at close range into Rayshawn Brown’s chest around the same time Brown also fired a shot from a gun that jammed in his pocket.

Karen Mohrlant, Holt’s attorney, argued that her client acted in self-defense while prosecutors showed video of Holt throwing the first punch during the Williams Pub brawl and said he returned to the scene armed rather than simply retreat.

“This is classic self defense, ladies and gentlemen,” she said during closing arguments in the trial on Thursday.

Before jurors were handed the case, defense attorneys challenged the government’s description of the Bloods as an organized criminal enterprise — instead painting them as a collection cliques and neighborhood groups that engage in sporadic violence.

“It’s not an enterprise,” Plunkett said last week. “It’s a loosely affiliated bunch of people.”

The notion that there is less structure within the Bloods today than in the past does not mean that there is no structure, Soria later countered.

“The fact is that criminal enterprises are just messy,” she said. “They’re not Fortune 500 companies.”