Columbia woman’s Facebook threats to informant add 4 years to her federal prison term

A 31-year-old Columbia woman who used Facebook videos to threaten a Midlands drug informant and his child will serve nine years in prison after a judge added four more years to her sentence.

“We cannot countenance direct or indirect threats to witnesses,” U.S. Judge Joe Anderson said near the end of a two-hour hearing at the Columbia federal courthouse on Tuesday before he sentenced Keisha “Kee” Pratt to four extra years in prison.

Pratt will now serve a total of nine years. She had pleaded guilty to a minor drug trafficking offense last fall. She was awaiting formal sentencing after she negotiated a plea deal that sentenced her to five years in federal prison for her illegal work with a 16-member Columbia-area drug conspiracy that distributed and sold cocaine, heroin, fentanyl and oxycodone.

In the gang, she helped round up customers and produced and distributed the drugs, according to evidence in her case.

But in mid-December, Pratt became angry at a fellow co-conspirator she thought had ratted her out. She posted three videos on Facebook blasting the man and his young son by name. In one video, she told the informant that he was “not safe” and that he was a “snitch.”

Federal prosecutors who had worked her case brough her into court in January. They argued to Anderson that Pratt had violated the terms of her plea by making threatening videos and was therefore eligible for an increased prison sentence.

“There is no faster way in the year 2022 to get the word out than to post it on Facebook,” assistant U.S. Attorney Brandon Batson Hinton told Anderson. “It spreads like wildfire.”

Pratt “put someone’s life at risk” and a child “in harm’s way” because she was angry at a person who had helped police, Hinton said.

Anderson agreed, recalling a case overseen by fellow federal Judge Cameron McGowan Currie, where a key witness in a case was killed a day before the trial was supposed to start.

“Bad things do happen on the criminal side of the docket,” the judge said.

A dangerous life

Hinton, who asked the judge to give Pratt five extra years, put FBI agent Josh Loomis on the witness stand to remind the judge of the dangerous life Pratt had led as a part of the conspiracy.

When police arrested Pratt, she was in a house she shared with fellow drug conspirator Christopher “Blink” Taylor, said Loomis, who led a drug task force that included the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Richland County Sheriff’s Department. Police found three pistols, an assault rifle, scales for weighing drugs, drug molds and about half a pound of cocaine, he said.

Taylor is a “close associate” of the Rolling 60’s Crips drug gang and has a lengthy criminal record, according to court records. In mid-March, Taylor was given a nearly 13-year sentence for his role in the conspiracy.

Drug traffickers such as Pratt and Taylor usually have guns around, Loomis told the judge under Hinton’s questioning.

“They are constantly worried about being robbed by a rival gang, ... or having the door kicked in,” Loomis said. “If you are going to deal drugs in these neighborhoods, you need guns or you will not be safe.”

Stephanie Rainey, Pratt’s lawyer, asked the judge to give Pratt three extra years for posting the threatening videos.

Rainey submitted reference letters of praise from people who had recently employed Pratt, including from a woman whose autistic son Pratt had regularly cared for and the head of a transportation company.

Before she was arrested in January, Pratt displayed “exceptional skill” in accounting and payroll and had a pleasant way that “opened the hearts of customers and employees alike,” wrote Steven Vinson, president of Centurion Logistics.

Rainey also said prosecutors were taking the videos too seriously.

Pratt didn’t mean to threaten anyone, Rainey said — she was angry, and she was just in effect telling the informant, “‘You hurt my feelings’ ... Rappers, when they are angry with each other, they express it through videos.”

Expressing remorse

Pratt told Anderson she was remorseful, had since gotten her life together and wouldn’t threaten a witness again. She said she had told her 14-year-old son that she would be out of prison in five years, but it’ll take longer now because “I got on Facebook,” she said.

“I honestly did not know I was doing something wrong,” she said, standing before the judge in an orange jail jumpsuit.

Anderson said it was not an easy decision.

The judge said Pratt suffered from “a very tragic upbringing, with her mother dying when she was two and sexually assaulted when she was 10.” But, Anderson said, at the time Pratt published her videos on Facebook she was 31, old enough to know better.

”She didn’t just put one video on, she put on three,” the judge said.

Pratt was indicted in 2020 with 15 other people and charged with being part of a Columbia-based drug conspiracy.

In their prosecution of the conspiracy, federal authorities seized 26 pistols of varying calibers and one shotgun, as well as more than $100,000 in cash.

Anderson sentenced the conspiracy’s leader, Nelson Escobar, to 16 years in prison in January.

This story was originally published March 30, 2022 at 5:00 AM.