Alleged leader of Latin Kings gang arraigned in Federal Hill murder
PROVIDENCE — The purported Almighty Latin Kings leader freed earlier this year from a life sentence behind bars was arraigned Monday on a charge that he fatally stabbed a Providence man just months after he walked out the prison door.
Joel Francisco, once known as Joey Crack on the streets, pleaded not guilty Monday before Superior Court Judge Maureen Keough to a single count of murder in the death of 46-year-old Troy Pine, of Providence.
Francisco, shackled to two other defendants, scanned the courtroom after entering, before a deputy sheriff directed him to look ahead. Pine’s family observed grimly as he entered his plea.
Keough ordered him held without bail and referred to the public defenders office. Assistant Attorney General Daniel Carr Guglielmo asked that Francisco, of Power Road in Pawtucket, be deemed a habitual offender upon conviction. He is being held at the Adult Correctional Institutions.
Authorities say Francisco fled after Pine’s Oct. 2 killing at the Nara Lounge on Federal Hill with the assistance of fellow Latin Kings. He was arrested by federal marshals on Oct. 19 at a motel in New Braunfels, Texas, as he allegedly tried to make it to Mexico.
Five days after Pine’s stabbing death, Latin Kings leader Michael Cecchetelli told a cooperating witness they “need to help Francisco get to Texas, where he will cross into Mexico with the assistance of Latin Kings members located there,” federal prosecutors said in an indictment unsealed last week.
Francisco was one of 62 people federal prosecutors charged last week in an operation targeting the Latin Kings gang.
The indictment filed in Massachusetts federal court cites Pine’s death as an example of criminal behavior carried out by the Latin Kings. Part of the racketeering conspiracy includes accessory after the fact to Pine’s murder.
The indictment also says that in September Francisco conspired to buy crack cocaine, the same drug that had earned him a life sentence in prison a decade and a half ago.
Francisco, 41, had served as the local leader of the Latin Kings, police have said. He was convicted of trafficking crack cocaine and sentenced to life in prison in 2005. Because he’d had two previous felony drug convictions, that sentence was mandatory under federal law at the time.
Francisco, however, was an early beneficiary of the First Step Act, a criminal-justice reform law signed by President Donald Trump in December that retroactively extended sentencing reductions for crack-cocaine offenses.
Francisco’s indictment comes as federal prosecutors accuse him of violating the terms of his supervised release by using marijuana and cocaine and trying to break into his ex-girlfriend’s house.
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