Latest Legal News from the Federal Criminal Courts in the United States

JUNE 18, 2007

ARMED GANG MEMBER SENTENCED TO 10 YEARS IN FEDERAL PRISON WITHOUT PAROLE

DALLAS - Bernardo Lozano, a Dallas resident, was sentenced today to 120 months in prison for being a felon in possession of a firearm, announced U.S. Attorney Richard B. Roper of the Northern District of Texas. The sentence imposed by U.S. District Judge Sidney A. Fitzwater is the maximum punishment permitted by federal law and will begin after Lozano serves the remainder of his state prison term, which was imposed following violation of the conditions of Lozano’s state parole.

Lozano, 25, was sentenced to the statutory maximum term of imprisonment, without the possibility of parole, because of the circumstances of his May 2006 firearm possession and his long history of violent crime. On May 18, 2006, officers from the Dallas Police Department went to a Dallas home to investigate a “911" complaint that a man, matching Lozano’s description, had pointed a shotgun at a passerby traveling on a bicycle and threatened that person with physical harm. Eyewitnesses identified Lozano as the perpetrator when he walked out of the house carrying a nylon bag that contained the shotgun.

In 1999, Lozano was convicted of aggravated assault for shooting a rival gang member and in 2001 of felony deadly conduct for shooting at a Dallas home. He was also convicted of three counts of aggravated assault for returning hours later to threaten three people with a gun outside that home, and retaliation, for calling one of his earlier victims and threatening her with injury should she press charges. Federal law prohibits convicted felons from possessing any manner of firearm or ammunition. Lozano is a longstanding member of a criminal street gang.