[R]UTLAND – A Burlington man was sentenced Monday to more than seven years in prison on drug dealing and firearms charges.
Prosecutors dropped a separate charge of human trafficking against Naquan Bowie, which would have carried a mandatory minimum sentence of 15 years in prison alone.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Paul Van de Graaf, who prosecuted the case, said Monday in federal court in Rutland that the human trafficking charge was dismissed because the woman didn’t want to go through the trauma of having to testify.
Van de Graaf said the human trafficking allegations were factored into the plea negotiations in the case, resulting in a longer sentence for Bowie than he otherwise would have received.
Judge Geoffrey Crawford sentenced Bowie to 90 months in prison on the charges of distributing crack cocaine and heroin as well as a separate count of being a felon in possession of a firearm. Bowie had earlier pleaded guilty to both offences.
Bowie was accused of forcing a woman to engage in sexual acts for his financial gain by using force, threats of violence and substances including heroin and crack cocaine.
“I’m sorry,” Bowie told the judge before the sentence was imposed. “This will be the last time you see me in here.”
According to the federal grand jury indictment returned in March 2017, Bowie trafficked a woman in Vermont from about October 2016 to about January 2017, “knowing that force, the threat of force, fraud, and coercion” would be used to cause the woman to engage in prostitution for his financial gain.
Van de Graff, in a sentencing document filed ahead of Monday’s hearing, wrote that the woman “expressed dismay” about having to testify if the case went to trial.
“Within months of Bowie’s arrest, she had entered long-term treatment to address not only her drug use but also the trauma she experienced from prostitution,” the prosecutor wrote.
“The government chose to enter into a plea with Bowie that acknowledged the possibility of his being convicted of the human trafficking charge,” Van de Graaf added, “but allowed him to serve substantially less time than he would have had been convicted.”
Bowie has previous drug convictions, including for selling cocaine in New York state, the prosecutor’s filing added.
Attorney Elizabeth Quinn, a public defender representing Bowie, wrote in her sentencing document that her client grew up in a dangerous neighborhood where drug dealing and shooting were common.
“He navigated these dangerous waters without the guidance of a father,” the defense attorney added. “He soon became involved in the drug trade himself and this became his life. This was the only way he had known and the only way he knew how to support himself.”
Since his arrest in the Vermont case, Quinn wrote, he had worked to turn his life around. She talked in court of programs Bowie, who has a daughter with his fiancee, has completed behind bars to improve himself.
“He recognizes that his conduct was spiraling at the time of his arrest and finally facing federal charges has provided the necessary incentive to leave that lifestyle,” Quinn wrote in her filing.
According to court records, Bowie help run a drug operation out of a basement apartment on Willard Street in Burlington. When police raided the apartment, they found a handgun in his bedroom.
The case against a co-defendant in the case, Gary Carter, who was not charged with human trafficking, remains pending, according to court records.