By John Annese
New York Daily News
NEW YORK — A “vigilante” guard at the MDC Brooklyn federal jail got nearly 17 years behind bars for shooting a fleeing contraband smuggler during a car chase — after a judge excoriated his lies on the stand and his weak apology for causing the victim “inconvenience.”
Leon Wilson, 51, a veteran corrections officer, fired a half-dozen bullets at a fleeing BMW after a mile-long chase from the Sunset Park jail’s staff parking lot on Sept. 4, 2023, hitting one of the passengers in the back. A jury needed just three hours to convict him on criminal charges in October.
“The defendant engaged in a brazen abuse of authority and breach of duty,” Brooklyn Federal Court Judge Pamela Chen said Tuesday, before handing down a sentence of 16 years and eight months in prison.
She said Wilson was “pursuing vigilante justice” when he abandoned his post to chase the BMW, open fire from his car, then return to work without calling 911 or reporting the shooting to his superiors.
“Mr. Wilson thought himself above the law,” the judge said.
Wilson, who took the stand in his own defense last year, was on perimeter duty the day of the early-morning car chase, when a BMW backed into the parking lot shortly after 4:30 a.m. , its occupants ready to deliver a package of pot, cigarettes and cell phones.
He chased the BMW in his Bureau of Prisons van for more than a mile — even though his authority ended once he left jail property — then opened fire on the vehicle, wounding its backseat passenger, Erick Encarnacion.
“Leon Wilson used the authority entrusted to him as a federal correctional officer not to protect the public, but to engage in a dangerous and unjustified pursuit that culminated in gunfire on the streets of Brooklyn,” U.S. Attorney Joseph Nocella said Tuesday.
Wilson was convicted of depriving the shooting victim of his civil rights while acting under color of law, and use of a firearm in a crime of violence. He has been locked up since November.
In a brief statement to the judge Tuesday, Wilson referred to Encarnacion as an “alleged victim.”
“I’d like to apologize to my family, all my friends, all my loved ones,” Wilson said, adding, “I apologize for any inconvenience to this court, the alleged victim, anyone that was hurt in this situation.”
He added, “I made a judgment call…. It happened to be wrong. It was wrong.”
Chen ripped him for that remark. “To say that he apologizes for the inconvenience of the victim? He shot the man in the back and nearly killed him,” she said.
Encarnacion, who watched the sentencing alongside his father, still has a bullet lodged in his back. “We would be having a very different discussion today if that bullet was one millimeter to the left or right,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Eric Silverberg said. “His life is forever altered by this senseless act.”
The prosecutor portrayed Wilson as out of control and self-righteous, and said any law enforcement officer with proper training would recognize just how dangerous he acted by chasing the car and firing his gun out of the window of a moving car.
He also blasted Wilson’s turn on the witness stand, where the former guard said he thought he might be witnessing a jailbreak and was “following escape procedures,” after supposedly seeing a rope hanging out of a window, and claimed to see the number of people in the BMW despite the hour, his line of sight and the car’s tinted windows.
“It is no small thing for a law enforcement officer to get up and take the stand, to take an oath, and to lie through his teeth,” Silverberg said.
Wilson’s lawyer, Jonathan Rosenberg, said he’s appealing the conviction, and asked for the judge to sentence him to the mandatory minimum 10 years in prison, pointing out his military history and his long tenure with the Bureau of Prisons.
“We don’t minimize the fact that the victim has a bullet lodged in his back,” he said. “This is a prosecution where we are looking at a window in time of a correction officer… There’s no dispute there was drug trafficking in the facility.”
Chen also excoriated Wilson’s turn on the witness stand, saying his perjury justified an increase in his recommended sentencing according to federal guidelines.
“The defendant made up the whole escape theory somewhere along the line,” she said. She pointed out that an escape attempt would have been a “major event” at the jail, yet he never reported it to anyone and only mentioned it as a legal justification for his action at trial.
“He did not say a word to anyone,” the judge said, “and he did not formally report it to anyone.”
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