John Gassew, the 25-year-old man convicted of robbing at least two Northeast Philadelphia businesses was sentenced to 37 years in prison Tuesday, according to federal prosecutors.
In 2010 the Philadelphia Inquirer profiled the apparent career criminal who was arrested 44 times without a single conviction before finally getting busted for robbing Danny's Bar on Torresdale Avenue and a 7-Eleven on Oxford Avenue.
In February, a jury convicted Gassew of two counts each of robbery and possession of a firearm during a crime following two days of deliberations.
At his sentencing a U.S. District judge sentenced Gassew not only to 37 years behind bars but also five years of supervised release and to pay more than $7,000 in restitution.
The case against Gassew was only picked up by federal prosecutors in 2010 after the Inquirer pointed out an apparent glitch in the city judicial system that was keeping a repeat criminal on the streets.
The successful conviction only came about because of “witnesses who are willing to come forward and victims who are willing to hang in there,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Linwood C. Wright Jr. told the Inquirer.
Not coincidentally, 20 other cases against Gassew in the past fell apart when witnesses failed to appear for court, reports the Inquirer.
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The newspaper’s series, which included Gassew, found that he was “a typical defendant in a system where nearly two-thirds of those charged with violent crimes escaped conviction on all counts.”
The Inquirer’s investigation concluded that even though Philadelphia has the highest crime rate among major American cities, it has the lowest conviction rate for violent crime.
