Lawyer argues Northampton drug conviction would amount to double jeopardy

By Linda Cicoira

A Norfolk lawyer claimed Tuesday that his client, a man caught in Northampton County in July 2020 with 6,142 grams of a cocaine mixture who is serving a 16-year federal prison term for his crime of drug distribution, should be allowed to take back his guilty plea in Northampton Circuit Court to an identical charge or be the victim of double jeopardy.

But this claim made by defense lawyer Andrew Sacks isn’t exactly new. And Commonwealth’s Attorney Jack Thornton says the charges aren’t identical.

Retired Judge Revell Lewis, who presided over the trial, agreed to give Sacks 15 days to review the cases that Thornton referred to in his arguments and respond in writing. Thornton will then have 10 days to respond again. Lewis said he would either dismiss the case or set a sentencing date.

Thornton argued that Richard Vizcarrondo Jr. was convicted of possession with intent to distribute in federal court and pleaded guilty in Northampton to transporting more than an ounce of cocaine into Virginia, which is a different crime.

The 36-year-old, also known as “Lil Rich” or “Rich,” was prosecuted in the state court by former Commonwealth’s Attorney Beverly Leatherbury, who has since retired. She referred to him at his trial as a “highly placed, long-standing” East Coast drug distributor. At that time, he agreed to plead guilty to the transportation charge and, in exchange, she didn’t prosecute the distribution count.

Vizcarrondo was indicted in November 2021. He was arraigned in August 2021, entered pleas of not guilty, and requested a jury to determine his fate. The trial was continued numerous times, and eventually, he pleaded guilty to transporting cocaine in a plea bargain. Sentencing was set for April of 2022, but that date was continued nearly 20 times.

In 2021, one of the defendant’s lawyers argued at his trial that Vizcarrondo was sentenced in U.S. District Court to 16 years in prison for two offenses. The lawyer contended that he had expected the state charges to be dropped and asked that any sentence given in Northampton run concurrently with the federal terms. That lawyer also said Vicarrondo had no access to the drugs, which were locked in a trap within the car when he was stopped by authorities while driving through Northampton County.

Court records show the federal charges involved both heroin and cocaine. The defendant was found guilty of conspiracy to distribute heroin between 2016 and August 2020 within the Eastern District of Virginia. The other charge was for possession with intent to distribute cocaine in Accomack County, the record stated. The location of Accomack was later amended to Northampton.

Sacks said his client should be allowed to take back his guilty plea in the local court so it can be dismissed. The lawyer said his client was tracked from Yonkers, N.Y. to the Eastern District of Virginia through telephone data and was stopped for a moving violation when the drugs were found. He said the defendant has 21 days from sentencing to withdraw his plea, which Sacks contended was timely.

“It would be a gross injustice not to allow him to withdraw his plea,” Sacks said. “No matter how much we dislike the conduct, we don’t want anyone to be convicted twice.”

Thornton agreed with that concept that “the law is the law. I don’t want to convict anybody of the same offense or the same act. That is not what happened here. These are two different crimes.”