A man convicted of trafficking in enough fentanyl to kill every person living in Bay County was sentenced to 30 years in prison Monday and fined $500,000, State Attorney Larry Basford announced.
Luchen Jerome Daley, 33, known as “The Jamaican,” was found guilty of Trafficking in Fentanyl (more than 28 grams) Feb. 25, the highest level of fentanyl trafficking addressed by statute. A jury needed 24 minutes to find him guilty after Prosecutor Morgan Morrell presented the State’s case.
Monday, Circuit Court Judge Timothy Register delivered the sentence, which includes the first 25 years being minimum/mandatory.
“We rarely see fentanyl in this quantity – 485 grams, almost half a kilo,” Prosecutor Morgan Morrell said after the trial. “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 sentence, it will be a very long time before this defendant can poison our streets.”
Daley was arrested Feb. 7, 2025, by Bay County Sheriff’s Office Special Investigations Division investigators after he ran away when they tried to serve a search warrant on his apartment.
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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.
Basford thanked the BCSO and its SID for its proactive work in making a case and preventing such a large quantity of potent drugs from making it onto the streets.
For more information, contact Mike Cazalas at mike.cazalas@sa14.fl.gov, or call 850-381-7454.