A man known as “The Jamaican” was found guilty of the highest level of Trafficking in Fentanyl Wednesday and faces up to 30 years in prison at sentencing, State Attorney Larry Basford announced.
Luchen Jerome Daley, 33, was arrested Feb. 7, 2025, by Bay County Sheriff’s Office Special Investigations Division investigators serving a search warrant on his apartment. A jury found him guilty as charged of Trafficking in Fentanyl (more than 28 grams) after 24 minutes of deliberation.
Under Florida’s enhanced drug trafficking statutes, the charge carries a maximum penalty of 30 years in prison with a 25-year minimum-mandatory that has to be served day-for-day with no gain time. Circuit Court Judge Timothy Register set sentencing for April 13.
“We rarely see fentanyl in this quantity – 485 grams, almost half a kilo,” Prosecutor Morgan Morrell said. “In its proper form it could have supplied a medical dosage to every person in the 14th Judicial Circuit. On the street, it was enough to cause more than 200,000 overdoses.
“Thanks to the Bay County Sheriff’s Office, its work with our office and this jury, it never made it to the streets, and this defendant is facing a long time behind bars.”
Morrell called members of the BCSO Special Investigations Division, who testified Wednesday that they served a search warrant on the defendant’s apartment Feb. 7, 2025. When they approached the defendant in a parking garage below his apartment, he fled on foot.
Some deputies gave chase, others proceeded with the search warrant and said a woman who answered the door shut it in their faces and locked it, so they breached it to prevent any evidence from being destroyed.
In the defendant’s bedroom – which had an air mattress, mail addressed to him, and his passport – they found a black backpack. Inside the backpack they found a large “pressed brick” of fentanyl and numerous pill capsules containing fentanyl.
“Not a few pills, not residue, not trace amounts,” Morgan told jurors in her closing argument, “but a great amount of fentanyl. There’s a reason we don’t have it here in court with us today. This is a highly potent narcotic that requires special handling.”
The defendant was caught about two blocks away. He said it was the first time he had bought that amount of fentanyl and told a deputy he would do “anything you want,” including providing information on how and where he obtained the drugs, to get out of trouble.
Basford thanked the BCSO and its SID for its proactive work in making a case and preventing such a large quantity of potent drugs to make it onto the streets.
For more information, contact Mike Cazalas at mike.cazalas@sa14.fl.gov, or call 850-381-7454.