The leader of the Wicked Town gang faction and one of its designated gunmen will receive significantly lighter sentences than other members of the violent West Side crew as part of plea deals reached Tuesday.
Gang boss Donald Lee and “shooter” Torance Benson pleaded guilty to racketeering conspiracy, just as their new federal trial was set to begin. Both were originally convicted in 2022 and were tied to seven murders.
Federal prosecutors were motivated to reach a deal to avoid the retrial and the resources it would require. The initial trial took two months and involved over 100 witnesses, and prosecutors were cognizant that those who cooperated during the first trial might be less willing to help again.
“None of the sentences in this case are fair in a moral sense,” U.S. District Judge Thomas Durkin said Tuesday.
“A lower sentence than I would like to impose is necessary to avoid a litigation risk,” Durkin added, telling prosecutors: ” You could have gone to a trial and lost.”
Durkin ordered a new trial for Lee and Benson earlier this year, after finding that prosecutors made undisclosed promises to secure key testimony during the original trial. In the retrial, defense attorneys would have had the opportunity to question former top prosecutors about the alleged promises made to cooperating witnesses.
Prosecutors have said Lee led a gang that “wreaked havoc” on the city’s West Side, flooding the streets with drugs and terrorizing citizens through “heinous acts of violence,” including murder.
Under the plea agreements Lee, 43, would be sentenced to 30 to 34 in prison. Benson, 33, would get 20 years.
Lee faced a mandatory life sentence, and Benson faced a maximum of life behind bars.
Durkin previously sentenced fellow Wicked Town member David Arrington and the gang’s “most ruthless shooter” Darius Murphy to 50 years in prison. Despite the lower sentences, Durkin said Lee would get out of prison at an age when he is “no longer expected to be a threat to the community.”
And while there may be, and likely is, a younger iteration of the gang operating in the city, Durkin said Wicked Town, as it once was, now ceases to exist.
“This gang, and the murders they went out and committed, is destroyed,” Durkin said Tuesday. “All the shooters will not be released for a long time.”
Lee and Benson smiled and waved to supporters before exiting the courtroom Tuesday. Separate sentencing dates have been scheduled next month.
The Wicked Town case was one of two major street gang cases set for a new trial this fall. Durkin is still set to preside over a second trial for Labar Spann, the reputed leader of the Four Corner Hustlers, who was originally convicted in 2021 and was tied to four murders.
A former prosecutor in that case is accused of making “unauthorized” promises to a key witness and soliciting false grand jury testimony from him.
While Durkin noted the circumstances in Lee and Benson’s case were “eerily” similar to what happened in Spann’s case, he said “unintentional” misconduct seemed to be at play in the Wicked Town case.
Spann’s second trial is set to start on Nov. 3.