Marvin “Mukk” Pippins, a 32-year-old gang leader, was found guilty of killing young Sean Peart (22) in revenge for the alleged murder of his twin brother in Brooklyn (NYC).
Although the defense argued that Pippins’ crime was to avenge the twin brother and not to further the interests of his “5-9 Brims” gang, a federal jury yesterday found him guilty of murder in aid of organized crime.
Pippins executed Peart, a rival “Real Ryte” gang member, as he sat in a car on Dean St. near Schenectady Ave on Dec. 19, 2015. The killer fired six shots at the victim, sitting unarmed with one foot in a cast in the driver’s seat, prosecutors said.
Pippins’ attorneys argued that he believed Peart had killed his brother Melvin Pippins, then 25, in a drive-by shooting in Brooklyn two months earlier. But federal prosecutors pointed out that Peart was in California the week Pippins’ brother was killed and could not have committed that homicide.
Pippins’ killing of Peart was “personal and completely unrelated in some way to the 5-9 Brims,” his attorney Richard Levitt told the jury in his closing argument Wednesday. Pippins testified at the two-week trial in his defense, Daily News noted.
“The defendant chose to admit that he killed Sean Peart. The evidence didn’t leave him much choice. But the fact that he admitted it doesn’t make it any less chilling, vicious, or criminal,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Lindsey Oken said in her closing argument.
The feds described Pippins as an influential gang member: he lacked a formal position but had the power to give the green light to whoever came in. They added that as part of the group, he participated in fraud, drug trafficking, cooking crack, and other acts of violence.
He had a reputation for violence to uphold and earned praise from one of his gang superiors for his skill as a “gunslinger,” Oken said. Judge Pamela Chen has not yet set a sentencing date.