Brooklyn Gang Leader Jason Soto Convicted of Murder: Faces Mandatory Life Sentence for 2015 Killing of Gang Leader Shakim Rivera
The U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of New York announced that Jason Soto, also known as "Twin," a leader of the Cypress Gangsta Crips (CGC) in Brooklyn, New York, was convicted by a federal jury on all three counts of a superseding indictment: murder in aid of racketeering, causing the death of CGC leader Shakim Rivera through the use of a firearm on February 22, 2015, and possession with intent to distribute cocaine in late 2024. Soto, 37, faces a mandatory sentence of life imprisonment when he is sentenced.
The verdict followed a two-week trial before U.S. District Judge Ramón E. Reyes. As proved at trial, the CGC is a subgroup of the Eight Trey Crips based in the Cypress Hills Houses of East New York, Brooklyn. Its members committed acts of violence to promote the gang, enforce its rules and keep rivals in fear, and earned money for the gang through robbery, fraud, and firearms and narcotics trafficking.
On February 19, 2015, CGC member Demetrius Graham, also known as "Duke," was shot and killed while asleep in his girlfriend's bed in Brooklyn. The murder was ordered by Rivera without the gang's authorization, because Rivera perceived that Graham had been disloyal, and it splintered the gang. Believing Rivera was responsible, Soto plotted his retaliation. On the evening of February 22, 2015, Soto lured Rivera out of an apartment building in Cypress Hills and drove him to a residential street in the Canarsie section of Brooklyn, where Soto and another CGC associate fatally shot him. Between 2016 and 2017, while incarcerated, Soto wrote a manuscript describing his motive for killing Rivera, his membership in the Crips, and the necessity of retaliation for a grievous act committed against a comrade.
"Today's verdict sends a message not only to the residents of the Cypress Hills Houses who were terrorized by Soto and his Crips gang, but to all communities, that law enforcement will hold these criminal enterprises accountable for their violent crimes, especially cold-blooded murder as in this case, no matter how long it takes," stated U.S. Attorney Joseph Nocella, Jr. FBI Assistant Director in Charge James C. Barnacle, Jr. said Soto's retaliatory murder shook the Cypress Hills Houses and the surrounding community, and that the FBI/NYPD Metro Safe Streets Task Force will continue to identify and dismantle violent offenders. NYPD Commissioner Jessica S. Tisch said that, as the leader of a violent gang, Soto orchestrated the execution of one of his own members in cold blood.
The case is the result of a decade-long investigation by the FBI, the NYPD and the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of New York into gang-related violence in and around the Cypress Hills Houses, which has resulted in charges against more than 20 defendants for drug trafficking, illegal weapons possession, robbery and murder. The docket number is 24-CR-511, and the case is being handled by the Office's Organized Crime and Gangs Section.
Source: GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 位于Brooklyn的西奥多·罗斯福联邦法院大楼（225 Cadman Plaza East，本案审理法院）。照片：Beyond My Ken，CC BY-SA 4.0，经Wikimedia Commons。当事人无官方照片，以法院标准建筑图代之。
