James Rosemond a.k.a. Jimmy Henchman won’t be getting out of prison if the U.S. Attorney’s Office gets its wish.
According to court documents obtained by AllHipHop, the feds say Donald Trump never pardoned the incarcerated music executive. James Rosemond contends the former president granted him clemency by simply mentioning it, but prosecutors dismiss his claims.
“The former President’s statements were not publicly communicated,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office said in a court filing. “A verbal commutation made to two liaisons of the Petitioner and unidentified individuals present with the President cannot be considered ‘public’ for the purposes of commutation, nor is it otherwise a reliable indicator of the President’s intent.”
Prosecutors added, The Petitioner asserts without analysis that the ‘verbal commutation’ by former President Trump was a public statement, but the nature of the communication and the three identified participants on the call make clear that the ‘verbal commutation’ was not public. Under the Petitioner’s own allegations, Mr. James Brown and Mrs. Monique Brown were on the phone with former President Trump and ‘people in the room with him [former President Trump]’ during the alleged commutation. However, even if this statement was made to limited members of former President Trump’s staff along with the Browns, this is not sufficient to make this ‘verbal commutation’ public.”
James and Monique Brown signed affidavits saying Donald Trump proclaimed he’d commute James Rosemond’s sentence in December 2020. But the former president never sent a record of commutation for Jimmy Henchman before leaving office in January 2021.
According to James Rosemond and his legal team, Donald Trump’s pardon became legally binding once the ex-president shared his intentions with others. The U.S. Attorney’s Office rejects this argument.
“If the Petitioner’s position that a commutation need only be made to one person were correct, then any convicted individual could claim he or she had a one-on-one conversation with the President wherein clemency was granted, and courts would be required to evaluate those facts,” the feds noted.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office insists Donald Trump’s words were too vague to justifiably warrant clemency. The feds believe the former president never clarified the extent of any pardon for James Rosemond, who’s serving multiple life sentences.
“’I want to do this’ and ‘Let’s get this guy home for Christmas’ have no legal effect and do not convey with any specificity or clarity that the President intended to grant clemency to Petitioner,” prosecutors declared. “The statements are not only ambiguous but also do not direct any person or entity, including the Bureau of Prisons, to take any action whatsoever.”
The feds continued, “Petitioner is currently serving eight (8) consecutive life sentences for numerous convictions in two separate Federal criminal cases. Again, the alleged statements by the former President do not specify which sentence(s) was to be commuted; how the sentence(s) was to be commuted, i.e., to time served or to a set number of years to be served; and/or whether any terms or conditions were to be placed on the grant of clemency.”
James Rosemond remains behind bars for running for a drug trafficking organization and ordering the murder of 50 Cent associate Lowell Fletcher. The U.S. Attorney’s Office asked the court to dismiss his petition for a writ of habeas corpus and keep him imprisoned.
