Judge orders convicted Baltimore lawyer Kenneth Ravenell to report to prison by July
A federal judge has ordered Baltimore defense attorney Kenneth W. Ravenell to report to prison by July 8, when he will begin serving a sentence that was delayed while he appealed his conviction on a count of money laundering.
Ravenell will report to the minimum security camp at the Federal Correctional Institution in Fairton, New Jersey, wrote U.S. District Judge Theodore D. Chuang in an order issued Friday.
Ravenell was sentenced to four years and nine months in prison at his sentencing nearly two years ago. A federal jury found him guilty of money laundering conspiracy at the end of a three-week trial in December 2021.
The government charged that Ravenell laundered nearly $2 million in drug money for a longtime criminal defense client and convicted drug trafficker, Richard Byrd, who became the prosecution’s star witness in Ravenell’s trial. Byrd testified that Ravenell knew the money was the proceeds of drug sales and served as an adviser to Byrd’s marijuana trafficking operation, offering advice on how to evade the authorities.
Jurors acquitted Ravenell of several other charges, including narcotics and racketeering conspiracy.
Prosecutors said Ravenell laundered some of the money through his law firm at the time, Murphy, Falcon and Murphy, which federal agents raided in 2014. Ravenell left the firm soon after but was not indicted until 2019.
The timing of the case has been central to Ravenell’s appeal, which ended last month when the U.S. Supreme Court declined to take up his petition. Ravenell successfully delayed his prison report date until his chances to appeal ran out.
Ravenell’s lawyers argued that the judge who handled his trial failed to instruct the jury on the five-year statute of limitations that applied to the money laundering charge.
On appeal, Ravenell claimed that he might have been acquitted entirely if jurors had been asked to consider the statute of limitations. A three-judge panel from the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the argument in a split ruling, and the full appellate court declined to take up the case in a 9-5 vote.
Ravenell’s petition to the U.S. Supreme Court had the backing of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and U.S. Rep. Glenn Ivey, a Democrat whose district covers most of Prince George’s County.
A well-known defense lawyer in Baltimore, Ravenell once argued before the Supreme Court nearly 20 years before the justices considered his appeal. Maryland’s top court ordered Ravenell’s law license suspended after his conviction.
Ravenell’s lawyer, Paul Solomon, did not respond immediately Tuesday to a request for comment.