BOSTON, Dec. 11, 2015—A gang associate and repeat gun offender was sentenced to up to seven years in state prison today, Suffolk County District Attorney Daniel F. Conley said.

A Suffolk Superior Court jury on Wednesday convicted STEVEN E. STEPHEN (D.O.B. 4/3/90) of Dorchester of unlawful possession of a firearm and unlawfully carrying a loaded firearm.  Jurors in that trial, however, did not hear of Stephen’s 2009 convictions for those same offenses. Stephen was initially sentenced to 18 months in a house of correction and two years of probation on those charges, but violated his probation and served out an additional year. 

Today, rather than face a second trial that would have established his prior gun case and additional convictions for assault and battery with a dangerous weapon and assault and battery on a corrections officer, Stephen pleaded guilty to the enhanced charges of possessing a firearm as a second offense and being a Level I armed career criminal.

At the request of Assistant District Attorney Ben Megrian of the DA’s Gang Unit, Judge Christine Roach sentenced Stephen to a term of five to seven years in state prison.

“It’s not enough to take guns off the street,” Conley said. “With more than 100 million handguns in the country, we have to stop the people who are using those weapons unlawfully. That’s exactly what Boston Police and Suffolk prosecutors did in this case, and the city is safer for it.”

During the course of the trial, Megrian presented evidence and testimony to prove that on the evening of Feb. 7, 2014, Boston Police received reliable information that Stephen – whom they knew as a member of an area street gang – was carrying a firearm.  Officers approached a vehicle in which Stephen was a passenger in the area of Harvard and Walk Hill streets; as they did so, they saw him shifting in his seat and moving his hands out of officers’ sight.

When officers removed Stephen from the vehicle, they discovered a loaded Cobra CA-380 semiautomatic handgun on the front passenger seat, where he had just been seated, the evidence proved.

Officers at the scene who arrested Stephen were familiar with him based on his prior arrests and affiliation with a gang involved in a violent feud with other city gangs.  Just over a week before his arrest, Stephen was inside a vehicle when another passenger, JAHMEILLA TRESVANT (D.O.B. 2/14/94) was arrested for unlawful possession of a firearm – an offense to which she later pleaded guilty.  Stephen was cited for possessing an open bottle of alcohol in the car.  At the time of his 2014 arrest, Stephen was on probation for assaulting a corrections officer.

Stephen was represented by John MacLachlan.

–30–

All defendants are presumed innocent until and unless proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.