Cocaine Trafficker Earns Lengthy Prison Sentence in Rankin County
Rankin County, MS - Madison and Rankin Counties’ District Attorney Bubba Bramlett announced that on May 23, 2023, 29-year-old Kevorkian Dehon Grace of Meridian pled guilty to trafficking cocaine. Judge Dewey K. Arthur sentenced Grace to forty years in the custody of the Mississippi Department of Corrections, with ten of those years to be served day-for-day without the possibility of parole or early release.
On November 18, 2020, an officer with the Pearl Police Department stopped a silver Toyota Camry driven by Grace on Interstate 20 for not having a license plate displayed and speeding. Upon approaching the car, the officer observed a strong odor of burnt marijuana inside the vehicle. Grace told the officer he was returning to Meridian from visiting his girlfriend in New Mexico. During a probable cause search of the vehicle, the officer found a backpack containing 107 dosage units of suspected ecstasy, over 84 grams of cocaine, marijuana, THC wax, and other drug paraphernalia.
The officer arrested Grace for trafficking cocaine and turned all the illegal narcotics over to the Mississippi Forensics Laboratory for analysis. The lab confirmed that the powder was indeed cocaine. After analyzing the 107 dosage units of suspected ecstasy, the lab found them counterfeit, containing no controlled substances. As a result, a Rankin County Grand Jury indicted Grace for trafficking cocaine on January 18, 2022.
District Attorney Bramlett stated, “Kevorkian Grace, despite being only 29 years old, has proven to be a career criminal. He has numerous prior felony convictions out of Lauderdale County, yet he again chose to ignore the law and traffic cocaine through Rankin County. We hope this conviction and lengthy sentence will teach Mr. Grace and others contemplating bringing drugs into Rankin County that breaking the law here will not be tolerated.”
Mr. Bramlett added, “We would like to thank the Pearl Police Department and analysts with the Mississippi Forensics Laboratory for making this conviction possible. Law enforcement officers across Rankin and Madison Counties risk their lives daily on our local interstates looking for drug and human traffickers.”
DEFENDANT:
Name: Kevorkian Dehon Grace
DOB: 08/02/1993
