Gang member gets 50 months in prison

Staff report

CLEVELAND

A 23-year-old Youngstown street gang member, whose jury conviction for racketeering was vacated by a federal appeals court, has been resentenced to four years and two months in prison after he pleaded guilty to that charge last month.

U.S. District Court Judge Donald C. Nugent resentenced Terrance Machen Jr., one of 23 federally indicted defendants in the LSP gang case on Youngstown’s South Side.

LSP stands for the streets where the gang conducted its criminal enterprise: LaClede, Sherwood, Parkview and Princeton avenues, according to the indictment.

Judge Nugent had sentenced Machen to nine years and two months in prison in October 2012 after a jury convicted him of racketeering.

The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, however, vacated Machen’s conviction on the grounds that Judge Nugent failed to instruct the jury that in order to convict him of racketeering, they had to find that he committed, after his 18th birthday, an act that “ratified” his participation in the conspiracy.

The indictment charged Machen with participating in the racketeering conspiracy between Jan. 1, 2003, and March 15, 2011, a period that included his juvenile years and some of his young adulthood.

Although Machen was charged only with the racketeering count, the indictment says he and two co-defendants kicked and punched someone near Canfield Road and Billingsgate Avenue in September 2003 and that he and several co-defendants shot at rival gang members between 2003 and 2011.

In July 2007, Machen wore a bulletproof vest and possessed marijuana outside a South Side gasoline station, the indictment says.