A drug trafficker who stored pounds of methamphetamine at an apartment on Mandarin’s San Jose Boulevard should serve a 135-month (11 years, three months) prison sentence, a federal judge has decided.
James Asberry III, 39, also sold fentanyl to federal agents, who described him in court records as “a kilo-level, poly-drug trafficker distributor.”
He could have faced as much as life behind bars but cooperated with investigators to have a chance to be free again sooner.
“I understand my decisions have consequences,” Asberry told Senior U.S. District Judge Harvey Schlesinger at his May 6 sentencing. “…I’m committed to making better choices.”
Asberry “was a prolific, successful drug dealer who sold weight,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Coolican told the judge.
More than three kilograms of meth and more than 100 grams of fentanyl were eventually recovered through an investigation in 2023 and 2024, the prosecutor said.
Asberry pleaded guilty almost two years ago to conspiring to distribute controlled substances to U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents, whom he directed to meeting places including McDonald’s outlets in Arlington and the Westside, gas stations, a Westside Walmart, a food truck on Normandy Boulevard and a Publix parking lot on Dunn Avenue.
Living in St. Augustine by 2024, he apparently kept both his home life and sales separate from a “stash house” that investigators reported him operating in a unit of the Waterford at Mandarin Apartments, 11247 San Jose Blvd., according to a federal court complaint filed in February 2024.
A plea agreement Asberry signed in July 2024 said investigators checking the apartment found meth, plastic bags and “kilo presses” for repackaging drugs into bundles each weighing a kilogram, or 2.2 pounds.
In Asberry’s home, authorities found $10,001 in a drawer below an oven, the agreement said. In total, $18,938 was found in the house, with Asberry and with another person, the agreement said.
Defense attorney Jason Porter told Schlesinger his client, who has been locked up since 2024, wants to live lawfully after his sentence. Porter had Asberry’s longtime barber tell the judge about conversations the two had where Asberry sought advice on setting up a legitimate business.
Asberry asked Schlesinger to recommend that the federal Bureau of Prisons place him either in Jesup, Georgia or at an Edgefield, S.C. prison where inmates in an apprenticeship program can be licensed as commercial truck drivers.
This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Meth trafficker with Mandarin ‘stash house’ gets 11-year sentence
Reporting by Steve Patterson, Jacksonville Florida Times-Union / Florida Times-Union
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