ASHEVILLE – Joshua Levi West, 22, an EBCI tribal member from Cherokee, was sentenced Thursday, Aug. 16 to serve 57 months in prison for being a felon in possession of a firearm. U.S. District Judge Martin Reidinger also ordered West to serve three years of supervised release following his prison term.
The defendant has been in federal custody since April 2011. Upon designation of a federal facility, he will be transferred into custody of the Federal Bureau of Prisons where he will serve his federal sentence without the possibility of parole.
In two separate cases, two Cherokee men were also sentenced on Aug. 16 for failure to register as sex offenders. Shane Louis Walkingstick, 27, an EBCI tribal member of Cherokee, was sentenced by Judge Reidinger to serve 16 months in prison to be followed by a lifetime of supervised release for failure to register as a sex offender.
In 2007, Walkingstick was convicted of engaging in a sexual act with a minor between the ages of 12 and 16, and, as part of his sentence, he was required to register as a sex offender. Walkingstick has been in custody since June 2011 and he pled guilty to failure to register as a sex offender in September 2011. He remains in the custody of the United States Marshals Service pending placement by the Bureau of Prisons. All federal sentences are served without the possibility of parole.
Leonard Junior Moore, 42, of Cherokee, was also sentenced on Aug. 16 in federal court to time-served on his conviction of failure to register as a sex offender. In addition to the 18-month prison sentence, Judge Reidinger also sentenced Moore to a lifetime of supervised release. Moore, a non-Indian, pled guilty to the charge in November 2011.
The prosecution for the government was handled by Assistant U.S. Attorney Don Gast of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Asheville.
– DOJ
