U.S. District Judge F. Kay Behm has tacked another five years onto the prison time of Omar R. Pouncy, 39, of Flint, after federal prosecutors said he masterminded a jailhouse scheme to drum up false testimony in his own case. Last Tuesday, Behm sentenced Pouncy to five years in federal prison and a $50,000 fine for suborning perjury while a jury was deliberating, and ordered that the new term run consecutively to his state sentences for a string of 2005 carjackings and armed robberies. Prosecutors say those older state terms alone are expected to keep Pouncy behind bars for decades.
Federal Prosecutors Announce The Sentence
Federal authorities laid out the punishment in a press release from the U.S. Attorney's Office. The release confirms that Behm handed down the sentence last Tuesday, ordered the federal time to be served after Pouncy finishes his state term, and imposed the $50,000 fine. It also notes that Pouncy entered his guilty plea after a jury trial had already begun, an eleventh-hour move that did not spare him from additional prison time.
How Prosecutors Say The Scheme Unfolded
According to GovInfo, investigators say Pouncy reached outside prison walls to rewrite the story of his 2005 crimes. The filings state that he paid Jaakawa McGruder $10,000 and carefully coached him so McGruder would falsely claim responsibility for the carjackings during a May 22, 2018 evidentiary hearing. Michigan Department of Corrections staff later found and searched two contraband cellphones Pouncy had allegedly been using behind bars. Text messages on those phones, the filings say, show Pouncy scripting McGruder’s testimony and arranging the promised payment.
Co-defendants And Court History
Two co-defendants, including McGruder and Rashad Shahid, pleaded guilty in 2024, and Shahid was later sentenced to 14 months in custody, according to CaseMine. Pouncy’s 2006 convictions for multiple carjackings and armed robberies were briefly vacated and then reinstated by a federal appeals court in January 2017, CBS Detroit has reported.
What Pouncy Will Actually Serve
Behm’s order that the five-year federal sentence run consecutively to Pouncy’s existing state sentences significantly stretches his potential time behind bars. The U.S. Attorney's Office says Pouncy’s earliest possible state release date is February 2055, with a potential state end date as late as December 2074. In the same release, FBI Detroit’s Jennifer Runyan warned that the scheme “nearly put a violent offender back on our streets.” Defense filings, as reported by The Detroit News, state that Pouncy admitted his role in the plot and accepted responsibility.
Legal Notes
Pouncy pleaded guilty to subornation of perjury. The broader indictment returned in May 2023 included related counts of witness tampering, obstruction and bribery, according to GovInfo. Prosecutors say the case was investigated by the FBI’s Flint Resident Agency, with help from the Michigan Department of Corrections and local law enforcement.
This sentencing caps a long-running legal saga that began with the 2005 crimes and has wound through state and federal courts for more than a decade. For Flint residents, the case is a pointed reminder of how contraband phones and carefully coached testimony can shake old convictions loose, only to drag them back into the spotlight years later.
