Opinion ID: 6335617
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Summary of Events and Indictment

Text: As presented through testimony at trial, after Robert Nieto (known as Cowboy), a leader of the Black Oak Latin Kings gang in Gary, Indiana, learned that a local drug dealer, Anthony Martinez, had “some pounds” of marijuana at his home, he devised a plan to rob Martinez’s home. Leading up to the deadly encounter at the center of this case, Nieto recruited Bruce Hendry (known as Casper), another Latin Kings gang member, and Hendry then reached out to Mark Cherry, a former member of the Black P. Stone gang, who also agreed to participate. Cherry in turn looped his roommate, Fitzpatrick, into the scheme. Fitzpatrick was also a member of the Black P. Stones, a gang known to be non-adversarial (at least to some degree) with the Latin Kings. On or about December 1, 2013, Cherry told Fitzpatrick that Hendry “had a lick”—also known as a “sting” or a robbery. Cherry then picked up an assault rifle and a handgun from the home he shared with Fitzpatrick. Cherry informed Fitzpatrick they needed the guns for the robbery and told Fitzpatrick there were drugs—specifically marijuana—in the target house. Hendry, Cherry, and Fitzpatrick drove together to Nieto’s house. While Fitzpatrick stayed in the car, Hendry and Cherry went in to talk with Nieto about their plans. Nieto told them that it would be an “easy” robbery to score “a couple pounds” of marijuana. The three men—Nieto, Cherry, and Hendry—planned to smoke some of the marijuana and No. 21-1286 3 resell the rest. Hendry and Cherry planned to carry out the robbery while Nieto listened on the police scanner. Shortly thereafter—sometime around midnight—the crew put the plan into action. Cherry and Hendry rejoined Fitzpatrick before the trio switched cars and were driven a short, approximately two-minute distance to the intended robbery location by a fourth person. They exited the car upon arriving at Martinez’s home—carrying firearms and obscuring their faces with masks and black hoodies. Martinez, the target of this drug-focused robbery, estimated that he was selling roughly “[a] couple hundred bucks, if that,” worth of marijuana per month at the time of the incident. That night, Martinez was watching television with his fiancée and two friends when he heard a knock on his front door. Suspicious because that door was not normally used, Martinez walked out the back door to investigate and was promptly hit in the head with a pistol as he turned the corner to the front of his house. Martinez’s assailant then “threw [his] sweater over [his] face and walked [Martinez] through the back door” into his home. Once inside, one of his attackers— later identified as Cherry—repeatedly asked where the marijuana was kept. Martinez indicated that at the time of the home invasion there was “[z]ero marijuana” in the home. Martinez’s brother, who lived next door, entered the kitchen, and a fight ensued. The brothers eventually subdued the assailants, but not before Martinez shot Cherry at least twice in the abdomen. After hearing “rapid fire” shots aimed at the house, the brothers took cover in the kitchen, using the refrigerator as a shield. The scene around the house was described as a “war zone” amid copious amounts of gunfire. In the chaos, an uninvolved friend of the Martinez brothers was 4 No. 21-1286 fatally shot by the ongoing gunfire while his toddler-aged daughter looked on. After sustaining serious gunshot wounds, Cherry was dragged from the home into the car in which he arrived, all while Fitzpatrick continued to spray fire from the street. After getting Cherry into the car, the group of robbers drove less than a block to Nieto’s house, where a nearby police officer arrested Cherry and the driver. Hendry and Fitzpatrick ran. After fleeing to a friend’s house, attempting to clean himself up with bleach, and telling a Latin King gang member present that he “just laid a [expletive] down,” Fitzpatrick placed his bloody clothes into a steel drum and set them on fire. The grand jury returned a two-count indictment against Fitzpatrick, charging him with (1) conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute marijuana, in violation of 21 U.S.C. §§ 841(a)(1) and 846, and (2) carrying, using, and discharging a firearm in relation to a drug trafficking crime resulting in killing defined as murder, in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 924(c)(1)(A), (j). Fitzpatrick denied committing these offenses and pleaded not guilty.