U.S. District Judge Frederic Block reduced Walter ”King Tut” Johnson‘s sentence to time served plus three years of supervised release. Johnson was released on Thursday from a federal prison in Otisville, nearly a two-hour drive northwest of Brooklyn, where Johnson is from.
King Tut spent 27 years behind bars after he initially sentenced the convicted robber to five life terms.
On August 15, 1995, Tupac wrote this letter from the prison, ends the letter, “Be / Careful!!! / The Walking Dead / Jack Agnant R.I.P. / Tut R.I.P. / Jimmy Ace R.I.P.” In this list, Tupac names the people he felt were behind the shooting at Quad Studios, “Haitian Jack” Agnant, Walter “King Tut” Johnson, and James “Jimmy Ace” Rosemond. Tupac later publicized these beliefs in his song “Against All Odds” on his posthumous album The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory.
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On June 15, 2011, an inmate at Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center serving a life sentence, Dexter Isaac, confessed to being an active participant in Shakur’s 1994 robbery and shooting. Isaac’s written confession to website allhiphop.com read, in part, “In 1994, James Rosemond hired me to rob 2Pac Shakur at the Quad Studio…He gave me $2,500, plus all the jewelry I took, except for one ring, which he took for himself.
Tupac pointed to Walter Johnson aka King Tut as one of the two shooters who robbed him in Quad Recording Studios, New York. The other shooter is Dexter Isaac
Johnson, who once had the street name “King Tut,” served nearly three decades in prison on robbery and drug charges. He was the only person ever sentenced to mandatory life in prison out of the Eastern District of New York, which covers Brooklyn, Queens and Long Island, under a federal statute known as the Three Strikes law, which targets repeat offenders, according to Mia Eisner-Grynberg, deputy attorney-in-charge of Federal Defenders of New York, which represented Johnson.
During his time in prison, Johnson had no disciplinary infractions, helped create programs for prisoners and received praise from prison officials for his positive leadership, according to court documents filed by Eisner-Grynberg.
“I now believe that my sentences, though lawfully rendered, were excessively harsh,” Block wrote in his ruling. “Just like prisoners who have evolved into better human beings during their lengthy periods of incarceration, judges also evolve with the passage of years on the bench.”
Block said the 2018 First Step Act allowed judges to reconsider prior sentences and prisoners to seek early release.
Eisner-Grynberg argued in court documents that Johnson would’ve never gotten five life terms under current judicial standards.
Johnson, now 61, said he intends to live with his family in Brooklyn and give back to his community by “mentoring young men to steer clear” of the choices he made, according to Mia Eisner-Grynberg, deputy attorney-in-charge of Federal Defenders of New York, which represented him.