By LANCE MARTIN
rrspin.com

GREENVILLE – Setbacks have delayed the sentencing for 14 Operation Rockfish defendants and a death in the family has delayed the arraignment of one who has yet to take a plea in the police corruption case, federal court records show.

Originally scheduled for arraignment on May 9, a motion to continue filed by Antonio Tillmon’s attorney, asked for a delay until the June 14 term of court in Greenville because of the death of his mother last week.

“Mr. Tillmon requests a period of time to make funeral and other grieving arrangements with his family,” the motion, which the government did not oppose, said.

Tillmon is a former officer with the Windsor Police Department.

Meanwhile, sentencing for the 14 who earlier accepted pleas and were scheduled to appear in court today (Thursday) has also been delayed until the June 14 term, according to federal court records.

Those scheduled for sentencing are Lann Tjuan Clanton, Ikeisha Jacobs, Wardie Vincent Jr., Jason Boone, Adrienne Moody, Cory Jackson, Jimmy Pair Jr., Curtis Boone, Alaina Sue-Kam-Ling, Kavon Phillips, Crystal Pierce, Alphonso Ponton, Thomas Jefferson Allen, II, and Tosha Rochelle Daily.

Jacobs, Vincent Jr., J. Boone, Jackson, Pair Jr., C. Boone, and Allen are all former deputies with the Northampton County Sheriff’s Office. Dailey was formally employed by Northampton County local government as a 9-1-1 dispatch operator.

Moody, Kam-Ling, and Phillips are former correctional officers with the North Carolina Department of Public Safety.

Clanton and Ponton were once employed as correctional officers with the Virginia Department of Corrections.

Pierce is a private citizen from Raleigh.

.“As of the filing of this motion, defense counsel has not received the draft pre-sentence report,” the motion says. “Criminal Local Rule … provides that the parties have a PSR draft at least 35 days prior to sentencing, contemplating that the parties have sufficient time to prepare any potential objections and develop sentencing strategy.”

The government had no objections to the motion, court records indicate.

The Operation Rockfish police corruption sting contains a 54-count federal indictment that alleges 13 current and former law enforcement officers and two other individuals protected narcotics shipments and cash proceeds during transit along the East Coast for what they believed was a large-scale drug trafficking organization that was actually an undercover operation by the FBI.

The conspiracy was ongoing since around Nov. 7, 2013 until the time of the arrests made on April 13, 2015.

(Lance Martin is the Editor and Publisher of www.rrspin.com. This article is published with permission.)