Camden drug gang's 'muscle' gets prison

The "muscle" for a violent and powerful drug gang that plagued Camden for more than two decades was sentenced Thursday to two life prison terms plus 25 years for murder, attempting to kill a witness, and drug conspiracy.

Juan Rivera-Velez - known as "Two-Face" because of severe scarring to his face and head from burns suffered in a car accident - did not apologize to the family members of one of the victims, Miguel Batista, who attended the sentencing hearing in federal court in Camden.

Angelique Batista, who was 3 when her father was killed in 1996, looked directly at Rivera-Velez and addressed him tearfully.

"I never experienced what it was like to have a father," she said. "I didn't have a man to tell me what's wrong from right. . . . I suffered a lot, and I hope you have remorse for what you did."

When asked by U.S. District Judge Joseph E. Irenas whether he wanted to address the court and the victims, Rivera-Velez answered meekly: "No."

Rivera-Velez, now 36, came to Camden from his native Puerto Rico in 1992 and began life as a drug dealer, according to the federal charges. In the "Alley," a notorious area in the city's Marlton section that has since been redeveloped, Rivera-Velez was the "muscle" - as Irenas called him - for Raymond Morales, a Camden cocaine kingpin from 1993 to 2003.

In September 1996, Morales ordered a hit on Batista, a rival dealer who was encroaching on his territory. Batista and Rivera-Velez were friendly, prosecutors said, but Rivera-Velez and Morales nonetheless lured Batista from a Camden bar, saying they had prescription drugs to sell.

While sitting in a car, Rivera-Velez shot Batista in the back of the head. Another associate in the drug ring disposed of the murder weapon while Rivera-Velez and Morales returned to the bar.

In 2003, after Rivera-Velez was released from prison for fatally shooting another man, Morales ordered him to kill Rafael Colon-Rodriguez - the man who disposed of the evidence in the Batista murder. Morales was concerned that Colon-Rodriguez would snitch to the police.

Rivera-Velez shot Colon-Rodriguez, but the man survived and fingered him. Rivera-Velez served three years in prison.

By the time Rivera-Velez got out, Morales - who had been arrested for picking up 66 pounds of cocaine in Philadelphia in 2003 - had turned informant. He later pleaded guilty to federal charges, admitted his part in six murders, and provided information that led to two dozen indictments.

In November, after eight days of deliberation, a federal jury in Camden convicted Rivera-Velez of drug conspiracy, weapons charges, murder, and the attempt to a kill a witness to a murder.

Rivera-Velez had no family members or supporters in the room on Thursday. No one showed up for his trial, either.

A hearing on restitution, to refund the Batista family about $12,000 in funeral expenses, is scheduled for December.

Rivera-Velez's attorney, Louis Charles Shapiro, asked for leniency in the sentencing based on Rivera-Velez's medical difficulties and lack of education. But the judge gave him the maximum sentence allowed under law.

"These were brutal contract murders," Irenas said. "His role was clearly to provide violence when violence was deemed required. When I consider the character of the defendant, I simply cannot find anything in the positive."

On leaving the courtroom, Batista's mother, Faustina Grullon, spoke two of the few English words she knows to the federal prosecutors and Drug Enforcement Agency investigators: "Thank you!"