A man serving an 11-year-sentence for robbery was sentenced Friday to an additional 15 years for retaliating against a witness who had testified in a federal criminal trial, the Maryland U.S. Attorney's Office said.
U.S. District Judge Roger W. Titus ordered that the sentences for Anthony E. Alascio, 31, formerly of Baltimore, be served consecutively.
"We have zero tolerance for any efforts to intimidate or retaliate against witnesses," U.S. Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein said in a statement.
Alascio was an inmate at the Chesapeake Detention Facility in Baltimore, awaiting trial in federal court on charges stemming from a 2012 armed robbery of a pharmacy, according to a news release. According to his plea agreement on the robbery charge, Alascio was a member of the Dead Man, Incorporated (DMI) gang.
On November 26, 2013, during a series of recorded telephone calls, Alascio told several people that he would soon be going into secure detention because of something he was about to do, the release said. Later that day, he assaulted another inmate using a sock filled with batteries and dominoes that had been taped together. The victim was seriously injured.
Several weeks before the assault, the victim had testified in the federal trial of Jose Morales, who was charged and later convicted in a murder-for-hire involving the DMI gang.
Alascio was sentenced in the robbery case in 2014 to 135 months in federal prison.
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