Minnesota Bloods trial will test feds' plan to go after street gangs like the mob

A trial now underway in St. Paul will have big implications for the Minnesota federal gang crackdown as prosecutors try to answer a key question: Can street gangs such as the Bloods be taken down with the same tools used to dismantle East Coast mob families generations ago?

For the first time since U.S. Attorney Andrew Luger started targeting gang crimes in Minneapolis — so far yielding charges against at least 80 people — a novel strategy to deploy racketeering conspiracy charges in such cases is being tested in front of a jury.

The government is using the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) statute to tie together a series of crimes — occurring years apart — that it alleges were carried out to enrich the Minneapolis chapter of the Bloods. Another RICO trial targeting the north Minneapolis Highs gang is expected to follow next year.

"These rivalries are serious — not a group of buddies who just like red T-shirts and hand signs," Assistant U.S. Attorney Kristian Weir told jurors in St. Paul late last week, referring to the preferred color worn by Bloods members. "These feuds mean something real and they're deadly serious."

Desean James Solomon, 34, of Richfield is already serving a 36½-year state prison term for killing a man during a shootout in 2020 outside the 200 Club in north Minneapolis. He's the first to take federal RICO conspiracy charges to trial since being indicted last year. Solomon is also charged with two counts of using and carrying a firearm during a violent crime that led to a death. If convicted, he faces a possible sentence of life in prison.

Also on trial are Michael Allen Burrell, 44, of St. Paul and Leontawan Lentez Holt, 26, of Minneapolis — each charged with using and carrying a firearm during a violent crime that involved death. Burrell is charged in connection with the 200 Club shooting, and Holt is charged with Solomon based on a 2022 killing. The latter shooting started with an assault inside the Williams Pub in Minneapolis' Uptown neighborhood.

Burrell is the older brother of Myon Burrell, whose life sentence for murder was commuted in 2020 after he spent nearly two decades in prison. Prosecutors say the 200 Club shootout started when Michael Burrell and Solomon confronted a man who testified against Myon Burrell at both trials held in the murder of 11-year-old Tyesha Edwards in the mid-2000s.

Thomas Plunkett, Solomon's attorney, is casting doubt on whether Solomon fired the shot that killed Marcus Banks during the June 2020 shootout. He told jurors that they would not agree that Solomon committed first-degree premeditated murder, which would undercut the government's racketeering case against him.

Plunkett said Solomon was a "man of the street" associated with "persons of low moral character" and has "done unsavory things to support himself." But he told jurors that he would "prove conclusively that he did not commit these murders."

Attorneys for Holt and Burrell — F. Clayton Tyler and Steven Wolter, respectively — meanwhile, previewed self-defense claims last week. Holt is charged with a 2022 homicide that started with the assault of a member of the rival Crips gang who stabbed a Blood years earlier. Holt is accused of shooting and killing the man's cousin, Rayshawn Brown when the fight spilled outside the bar. Solomon and other Bloods, including a 16-year-old who fired seven shots, also participated, Weir said.

"They did this to keep their place," Weir told jurors. "They did this to put in the work inside the gang."

Building RICO cases

Jeffrey Grell, an attorney and University of Minnesota law professor who specializes in RICO cases, was surprised by Luger's decision last year to apply charges that require jurors to agree that a constellation of crimes is connected to a single "enterprise."

Grell, who taught a course on RICO laws to the Minnesota Federal Defender's Office last year, said he believes the U.S. Attorney's Office sought RICO charges because they better grabbed the public's attention than individual drug and gun charges would have.

"Every administration wants to look like they're tough on crime," said Grell, who said the prosecution may want to tell a compelling story about law enforcement doing its job amid attempts to revitalize Minneapolis.

Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O'Hara has worked closely with Luger since coming to the city from Newark, N.J., in 2022 and has assigned two full-time investigators to work in his office on RICO cases.

"There's no question that that has had a psychological deterrent effect, in the same way that our city had the opposite effect happen in the summer of 2020 when the precinct burned and there was just this overwhelming sense of lawlessness around the city," O'Hara said in an interview, referring to the violence that followed George Floyd's murder by a Minneapolis police officer.

He said that the Bloods' numbers have been dwindling and, without specifying numbers, said "it's not our most prolific, most problematic gang." Officials say that distinction belongs to the rival Highs and Lows gangs based in north Minneapolis.

U.S. District Judge Susan Richard Nelson is presiding over the trial. An anonymous 16-person jury, which appeared to be all white and composed of 10 women and six men, was impaneled Wednesday after one day of jury selection. Defense attorneys objected to the racial composition of the jury, but Nelson overruled them on the eve of the trial's start.

All three men on trial are accused of belonging to the local chapter of the Bloods, a street gang founded in Los Angeles in the 1960s. The Minneapolis chapter is primarily made up of two subsets: the Outlaw Bloods and Rolling 30s Bloods.

Inside the Bloods

According to court filings from local and federal law enforcement officials, which draw upon intel from informants and cooperating defendants, the chapter has been around for "several decades" while carving out territory in south Minneapolis. That territory stretches from a northern border of Lake Street to 46th Street, with Cedar and Nicollet avenues as its eastern and western borders.

Prosecutors say the Bloods maintain a hierarchy that starts with new recruits dubbed "young gangsters," who can rise in rank to become more-respected "original gangsters."

William Blair, a 47-year-old Richfield man who pleaded guilty to racketeering charges under seal, testified Friday that the Bloods initiate members by "jumping" them into the group. Blair said he was just 10 years old when a group of older Bloods ambushed and beat him while he was still in uniform after football practice.

Delivering the government's opening statement last week, Weir illustrated how the Bloods went from selling drugs largely out of public view for decades until the uprising that followed Floyd's murder. Bloods already were referring to the 38th Street and Chicago Avenue intersection now known as George Floyd Square in the heart of their south Minneapolis territory as simply "the Square."

Prosecutors plan to show video of open-air drug deals at a time when police were not patrolling the area, deals that included sales of "hundreds" of fentanyl pills to secret FBI informants.

They also plan to call Isaac Hodge to testify about being assaulted by Bloods during the deadly gun battle at the 200 Club. According to court filings, Hodge twice testified against Burrell's younger brother, Myon, at the 2003 and 2008 trials for Tyesha Edwards' murder.

Prosecutors have disclosed that one or more additional cooperating defendants will also testify that Hodge has ties to the Family Mob, a rival gang of the Bloods, and that Hodge is considered to be a "serial cooperator." Minneapolis Bloods members are expected to fight rivals and help other Bloods fight or shoot at members of rival gangs who have disrespected them. Cooperating with law enforcement "violates one of the most important rules of the Minneapolis Bloods" and the penalty for cooperation is being beaten or shot.

Visibly uncomfortable and slow to respond to questioning at times, Blair pointed out the three alleged Bloods on trial and described their respective ranks and roles in the gang. He said he met Burrell, whom he knew as "Big Skitz," while the two were incarcerated at the state prison in Lino Lakes.

Blair told jurors how he became an enforcer for the Bloods, assaulting rivals or other Bloods members who violated the gang's rules. He said he sold drugs and kept a presence in his neighborhood of 35th Street and Chicago Avenue for more than two decades. He said he witnessed at least five shootings and lost a friend to a shooting that was a reprisal for talking to law enforcement.

"What happens when a Bloods member testifies?" Assistant U.S. Attorney Esther Mignanelli asked Blair on Friday.

"Death," he responded.