A Norfolk man was sentenced to 17.5 years in prison for illegally possessing firearms as a felon, four counts of witness tampering and obstruction of justice, and one count of unlawful possession of a controlled substance.
According to court documents, in October and November 2017, Adonis Marquis Perry, 32—a five-time convicted felon who had sustained two state convictions and one federal conviction for being a felon in possession of firearms and ammunition—took pictures of himself holding a Glock, Model 17, 9mm semi-automatic handgun, loaded with an extended magazine, and a Taurus, Model 66, .357 magnum revolver.
On December 18, 2017, Perry was arrested at a traffic stop in Norfolk after attempting to elude law enforcement by running through stop signs and making rapid turns, finally stopping in a residential parking lot. When law enforcement caught up to the car, they ordered the two occupants out of the vehicle. After receiving permission to search the vehicle, officers found the Taurus revolver and the Glock handgun—the latter loaded with the same magazine that was in the defendant’s pictures.
Perry spent the next seven months after his arrest making recorded calls from the jail to engage in witness tampering and obstruction of justice, specifically involving a series of efforts to interfere with the potential testimony of the second person who was in the car during Perry’s arrest encounter. The defendant controlled the witness through fear—at one point before his arrest, he pointed the Glock handgun at the witness and threatened to kill her if she left him, and on jail calls he reminded her that he knew where she and her family members lived.
Since his arrest, Perry has threatened to hurt or kill at least five of his seven court-appointed attorneys and even lunged at one in the middle of a status hearing in federal court. Perry also mailed letters to some of his attorneys threatening to send associates to their offices if they did not move to withdraw from his case.