A 50-year-old Robstown man was sentenced Wednesday to 60 months in federal prison after a routine traffic stop on State Highway 44 turned into a 100 mph chase that ended with him hurling two kilograms of cocaine out of his car window. Michael Casas had pleaded guilty in May to federal cocaine distribution charges tied to a planned drug sale, and a judge finally handed down his punishment nearly five months later.
U.S. District Judge David S. Morales sentenced Casas to five years in federal prison followed by four years of supervised release, according to kiiitv.com. Casas will remain free on bond until he is summoned to voluntarily surrender to a federal Bureau of Prisons facility, the station reports — a notably different arrangement than some other pursuit cases have seen in the same district.
According to the seed story shared by the US Attorney SDTX, Casas was sentenced after fleeing from police in a high-speed chase that followed a drug transaction. The Department of Justice laid out the sequence in more detail: the March 17 incident began as a traffic stop on Highway 44 in Corpus Christi, where Casas accelerated past 100 mph before tossing a brick-shaped package containing two kilograms of cocaine from his vehicle window and eventually surrendering.
A Joint DEA and Local Investigation
The case was investigated jointly by the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Corpus Christi Police Department, with Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Griffith prosecuting the case for the Southern District of Texas, per the same DOJ account. The sentence reflects the statutory mandatory minimum under federal law: convictions involving 500 grams or more of cocaine trigger a required minimum of five years in prison and a maximum of up to 40 years, according to the Legal Information Institute…