NORFOLK, Va. — On Monday, 30-year-old Rashad Dooley pleaded guilty to attempting to smuggle prescription opioids into the Norfolk City Jail while awaiting sentencing for his role in the 2011 murder of ODU student Christopher Cummings, according to the Norfolk Commonwealth's Attorney's Office.
The office says on Oct. 28, 2022, a Norfolk sheriff's deputy intercepted a package addressed to a different inmate who at the time was housed in the same cell section as Dooley.
The package was labeled as "legal mail," supposedly from Dooley's Norfolk-based attorney according to the Commonwealth Attorney's Office, but the return address was not that of his attorney's office and stamped as being mailed from Newport News.
When deputies contacted the law office, staff confirmed they did not mail the package to the jail. Dooley was the only inmate in that cell section from Newport News at that time.
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Man convicted in 2011 death of ODU student gets 25 years in prison
The office says members of the Norfolk Sheriff's Office Security Threat Unit opened the package and found numerous doses of buprenorphine, a Schedule III controlled substance and opioid that can be used to treat opioid addiction, but also be abused recreationally, according to the Commonwealth's Attorney's Office.
Video surveillance from the Newport News post office showed a woman known to Dooley mailing the package, and recordings of jail calls between the two confirmed that they discussed delivering a package with the wrong name on it.
Dooley was sentenced to an active 25 years in prison for his role in the murder of Christopher Cummings on Feb. 10.
On Monday, Dooley pleaded guilty to attempting or conspiring to deliver a controlled substance to a prisoner, and was sentenced to five years in prison to run concurrent with the 25 year murder sentence.
The Commonwealth's Attorney's Office says as a condition of Dooley's guilty plea and in recognition of his role in recruiting the woman who mailed the package, the Commonwealth agreed to move nolle prosequi on the charges against her.
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