A gun trafficker says he shouldn’t get a longer sentence after being caught with a makeshift weapon in his cell at MDC Brooklyn – because the federal lockup is so violent he needs it for protection.
Federal prosecutors want Raymond Minaya, 29, to spend more than 15 years behind bars for his role in a gun-dealing ring — six years more than the ring’s leader received — in part because of the sharpened metal rod and cell phones found stashed in his jail cell last year.
Minaya’s lawyers essentially called the contraband a necessary reality in MDC Brooklyn, pointing out that guards found the weapon last November, just a few months after a string of violent attacks and two murders at the troubled Sunset Park lockup.
“Possessing an object to protect himself against the well-documented dangers of the MDC cannot fairly be said to be evidence that Mr. Minaya has not accepted responsibility for his conduct or withdrawn from criminal activity,” wrote Jeffrey Dahlberg and Mia Eisner-Grynberg of the Federal Defenders on Wednesday.
“Mr. Minaya did not use or threaten to use the object, nor was he ever seen brandishing it; it was merely inside his cell, arguably as a deterrent to others or as emergency protection given the recent violent incidents there.”
And the cell phones, they argue, can be the only way to reach family members due to the frequent lockdowns at the jail.
Several federal judges — including Brooklyn Federal Court Judge William Kuntz, who’s scheduled to sentence Minaya on Tuesday — have railed against the notorious conditions at MDC Brooklyn and have shaved months or years off some defendants’ sentences to account for the conditions inside. The jail currently houses Sean “Diddy” Combs and alleged CEO-killer Luigi Mangione.
Prosecutors have a different perspective on Minaya’s motives: the Gorilla Stone Bloods member has a long history of violence and rule-breaking behind bars when he served time in state prison, including three separate assaults on inmates, they argue.
“The government expects that the defendant, like many other MDC inmates, will use those conditions as a reason for this court to impose a lesser sentence,” prosecutors wrote in a letter to Brooklyn Federal Court William Kuntz. “But he cannot simultaneously contribute to the dangerous conditions at the MDC and then claim them as a reason he should be granted leniency.”
Photos on his contraband phone show bags of pot and him smoking on a video call with other inmates, prosecutors note.
“Additional images appear possibly related to a contraband smuggling scheme, including images of pellets, money transfers, and dried leafy substances,” federal prosecutors wrote in a Tuesday filing.
Minaya and three other men were busted in 2023 on charges they sold more than 50 firearms to an undercover cop in Brooklyn, making the sales in a crowded waterfront park and on a playground.
Minaya sold 12 of those guns personally, including one weapon used in a 2021 shooting at a Bedford-Stuyvesant family day celebration that left eight people wounded.
All four suspects took plea deals last year. The ringleader, David McCann, was sentenced to nine years, while accomplice Tajhai Jones got just over eight years. The remaining defendant, Calvin Tabron, awaits sentencing.
Originally Published: June 22, 2025 at 3:39 PM EDT
