A federal jury just delivered a sweeping verdict against three members of what the FBI called Cleveland’s most significant gang threat.

Raven Mullins, Malik Brooks and Jayon Florence were convicted after a three-week trial on charges tied to murder, kidnapping, drug trafficking and gun crimes.

All three men now face possible life sentences. Federal officials say the verdicts bring the number of Fully Blooded Felons members convicted in the case to 25.

FBI Cleveland announced the result Thursday and credited the federal, state and local investigators who spent years dismantling the organization.

The Justice Department says Mullins, 37, oversaw the gang’s governing body, known as the Commission. Prosecutors described a hierarchy of commissioners and capos who enforced orders, collected money and imposed punishments that could range from fines to death.

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The gang operated primarily on Cleveland’s east side and extended into Akron, Youngstown and the Ohio prison system. Members were required to observe a code of silence and memorize internal rules that demanded loyalty and obedience.

The evidence at trial exposed what those rules meant in practice. Prosecutors said members kidnapped a woman they suspected of sharing information with a rival gang, beat and choked her, reviewed her phone and held her overnight.

The next day, Brooks and Florence joined other members in driving the woman to Cleveland’s west side. She was shot 19 times and left inside a stolen vehicle.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Ohio summarized the breadth of the jury’s findings:

That killing was only part of the federal case. The jury also heard evidence that gang members kidnapped and assaulted another woman after she spoke to police about a robbery.

Prosecutors connected Mullins to a second murder through a knife sheath carrying his DNA. They also presented evidence that Brooks shot two rival gang members and that the organization used apartment stash houses for drugs and firearms.

Searches of those locations produced more than 300 grams of fentanyl, cocaine and methamphetamine, along with seven guns.

Hoodline’s account before the trial documented the scale of the prosecution and the allegation that Mullins ran a ten-member commission with as many as 25 capos beneath it. The report also noted that other defendants had already received sentences ranging from probation to more than 15 years before this final trial began.

The new verdicts put the three remaining defendants in a different category. RICO murder and the related federal charges carry maximum penalties of life in prison, although sentencing dates have not yet been set.

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DOJ’s Criminal Division called the organization a source of sustained violence across Ohio communities.

FBI agents worked the case with Cleveland police, ATF, DEA, the U.S. Marshals Service and numerous state and county partners.

That cooperation matters. A gang rooted in city neighborhoods, state prisons and multiple Ohio communities cannot be dismantled by one office working alone.

The verdict shows what patient federal prosecution can accomplish: build the racketeering case, connect the crimes, protect the witnesses and make the people giving the orders answer for the violence carried out beneath them.

Twenty-five convictions later, the Fully Blooded Felons no longer control the ending to this story. A federal judge will.

 

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