Trial begins for claimed gang leader accused of orchestrating kidnap of prosecutor's dad
A jury was selected Monday in the federal trial of a prison inmate accused of orchestrating the kidnapping of a North Carolina prosecutor’s father in retaliation for a 2012 conviction.
Kelvin Melton, a 51-year-old reputed street gang leader, is also accused of an alleged kidnap scheme targeting a person linked to the defense lawyer in the 2012 trial. However, prosecutors say that scheme was aborted as Melton arranged to pay co-conspirators $10,000 each in an interstate kidnapping plot that resulted in the abduction of 63-year-old Frank Janssen from his Wake Forest home in April 2014. Janssen was rescued by an elite FBI team in Atlanta after being held for five days.
On Monday, Melton sought to dismiss his lawyers and represent himself at the Raleigh trial. But U.S. District Judge James Dever III said the defendant was trying to abuse the court process and refused to dismiss Melton’s defense attorneys, according to the Associated Press and the News & Observer. An earlier News & Observer story provides more details.
The feds say Melton used a contraband cellphone to oversee the alleged schemes while serving a life term in state prison in North Carolina. He is now being held in solitary confinement in federal prison, and his defense lawyers have been restricted from providing their client with information about witnesses in the case against him.
In opening arguments Tuesday, prosecutors said Melton, a founder of the Bloods gang who is known as “the Godfather,” ordered underlings to kidnap Colleen Janssen, the Wake County prosecutor who got him a life term. However, they botched the job and abducted her father instead, another Associated Press article reports.
Prosecutors said the government wiretapped Melton’s prison cellphone and caught him ordering the kidnappers to kill Frank Janssen.
Defense lawyer Gerald Beaver said nine witnesses in the case, who made deals with the government to avoid potential life terms or death sentences in earlier crimes, are not credible.
Janssen himself calmly told the jury about the kidnapping Tuesday, explaining that he started to open the door at his home after he heard the bell and saw a woman at the door. He tried to close it as bodies rushed at him, but couldn’t do so.
The intruders forced their way into his home, put a firearm to his head and shocked him with an electronic stun gun. When he came to, Janssen said, there were zip ties on his hands and the intruders were racing around and shouting “Where’s the girl?” reports WRAL.
Thrown into the back of a car, Janssen chewed the zip ties off and tried to grab the driver in order to cause an accident, he said. But he got only the man’s sweater, and his infuriated captors punched and kicked him and put handcuffs on him.
In Atlanta, he spent several days tied to a chair in a small locked closet until the FBI rescued him. Janssen showed jurors scars on his hands and feet and said he needed surgery to remove a blood clot in his foot after the kidnapping. He spent 20 weeks hospitalized, learning to walk again.
He also suffered emotional scars, is less trusting of others, and never opens the door at his home, Janssen told the jury.
Although he is glad it was he rather than his daughter who was victimized, the kidnapping is “always there” in his mind, he said.
Related coverage:
ABAJournal.com: “Imprisoned street gang leader used smuggled cellphone to plot kidnap of prosecutor’s dad, DOJ says”
Washington Post (reg. req.): ” ‘Staggering corruption’: 46 Georgia prison officers indicted in FBI drug and contraband sting”
