Alleged leader of West Baltimore criminal organization sentenced to 5 years of prison after plea
A 41-year-old arrested during a sweeping West Baltimore organized crime takedown in 2023 was sentenced to five years of prison Monday after pleading guilty to conspiracy and firearms charges.
As part of the plea agreement, prosecutors from the Maryland attorney general’s office dropped over a dozen charges against James Brunson, including a count of attempted murder stemming from a 2022 shooting.
Brunson and 32 others were charged in 2023 in connection with the organization that prosecutors from the state allege controlled three “open-air drug markets” in West and Southwest Baltimore. Prosecutors had alleged that Brunson was a high-ranking member of the group who managed a corner on North Bentalou Street with Ernest Hudson, 38, who pleaded guilty to gang and drug charges last August and was sentenced to 25 years in prison.
State prosecutors had asked Baltimore Circuit Judge John Addison Howard to sentence Brunson to 20 years behind bars. Howard ultimately sentenced him to five years, suspended down from 25 years, of incarceration without parole and ordered him to serve three years of supervised probation.
Brunson’s defense attorney, Angela Shelton, said that her client is “satisfied with the resolution of the case” and declined to comment further.
The 16-month probe led investigators to seize a large quantity of cocaine and fentanyl as well as nine firearms and about $30,000 in cash. Investigators with Baltimore Police and the attorney general’s office’s Organized Crime Unit used undercover detective buys, video surveillance and wiretaps to find how the group used firearms, violence and threats to control the drug trade in their territory, the attorney general’s office said at the time.
Video surveillance had shown Brunson and Hudson involved in a “dispute with other individuals” before retrieving handguns from their vehicles and firing at the other people, the office said. Nobody was injured by the gunfire near West Baltimore and North Bentalou streets.
The indictment also alleged wiretaps revealed in-fighting within the organization’s leadership. At one point, it alleged, Brunson offered $5,000 for someone to shoot Hudson. That prompted police to covertly remove Brunson’s gun from a stash house, though that led to more bounties for the alleged gun thief, the indictment says.
Brunson pleaded guilty Monday to participation in a criminal organization; conspiracy to supervise a criminal organization; and illegal possession of a firearm.
Several of his codefendants have already pleaded guilty to drug offenses. Others have either still not been apprehended, failed to appear in court or have not been captured.
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