Prosecutors Make Case Against Poospatuck Cigarette Magnate

By Robert E. Kessler, Newsday, Melville, N.Y.

Nov. 15–”Behind every crime in this case was a fortune,” a federal prosecutor charged Wednesday in an opening statement at the murder and racketeering trial of multimillionaire cigarette magnate Rodney Morrison.

Assistant U.S. Attorney James Miskiewicz acknowledged he was turning the French author Balzac’s line — often paraphrased in English as “behind every great fortune is a crime” — on its head.

But Miskiewicz told a jury at U.S. District Court in Central Islip the words applied to the ruthless way Morrison controlled an almost monopoly of bootleg sales at his Peace Pipe Smoke Shop on the Poospatuck Indian Reservation in Mastic through a campaign of robbery, arson and, finally, murder.

Morrison, who has been held without bail as a danger to the community and a flight risk, unsuccessfully offered to put up alone $56 million in bail.

Morrison was an adept businessman who started out dealing crack cocaine on the streets of Brooklyn, but took his “entrepreneurial” skills and “remade himself” in illegal cigarette sales on the reservation, said Miskiewicz, who is prosecuting the case along with assistant U.S. Attorney John Durham.

Miskiewicz said that alongside parts of the tiny reservation with its signs of squalor — abandoned cars and homes, and with a high unemployment rate — Morrison’s two-story smoke shop stood out with its high-tech computer operation, marble and oak executive suit, Internet sales Web site and sophisticated surveillance system.

Defense attorneys, who did not give an opening Wednesday, have agreed that Morrison is a talented businessman. But they have said that is all he is, and he is being prosecuted by the government because he is black and his wife is an Indian, and they are highly successful.

One by one, prosecutor Miskiewicz highlighted some of the alleged crimes Morrison ordered: There was the robbery of one rival’s smoke shop — Monique’s — in which the owner was tied up, a blanket was tossed over his head and thousands of cartons of cigarettes stolen, along with $30,000 in cash.

Then there was the arson of a car belonging to the owner of another smoke shop — TDM.

And, Miskiewicz said, there was the Brooklyn murder of Sherwin Henry, the owner of another smoke shop — the Golden Feather. Henry was a former protege who left the Peace Pipe and went into the cigarette business, filching a computerized list of Morrison’s customers to start out.

Morrison paid $5,000 to have Henry murdered; and then an apparent bonus of $10,000 to the person who hired the assassins. When he handed the “bonus” money to the alleged middle man in the murder, Morrison said, “we could get together in the future,” Miskiewicz said.

The trial is expected to continue Thursday before U.S. District Judge Denis Hurley. Morrisons’ attorneys have not announced whether they plan an opening statement, their version of events, but something which they are not require to do.

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