Indiana Man Sentenced for Drug Conspiracy

SYRACUSE, NEW YORK – John Rice, age 57, of Crawfordsville, Indiana, was sentenced yesterday to serve 63 months in federal prison for his conviction for conspiracy to distribute and possess with intent to distribute 50 grams or more of methamphetamine.

United States Attorney Carla B. Freedman and Janeen DiGuiseppi, Special Agent in Charge of the Albany Field Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), made the announcement.

As part of his previous guilty plea, Rice admitted that he supplied over 50 grams of methamphetamine and a handgun to Cortland, New York-based drug dealer Kyle Leeper as part of a methamphetamine conspiracy that included members in Indiana, Cortland, and Los Angeles, California. Kyle Leeper was sentenced in November 2022 to serve 40 years in federal prison for his murder of a California man during a drug deal there in 2019 as part the conspiracy. 

Rice was also ordered to serve a 4-year term of supervised release following the completion of his federal prison sentence. Rice’s federal sentence is consecutive to an Indiana State prison sentence he is serving for unrelated drug charges.

This case was investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), with assistance from the Montgomery County (Indiana) Sheriff’s Department, the Montgomery County (Indiana) District Attorney’s Office, and other Federal, State and Local law enforcement agencies.  Assistant U.S. Attorneys Steven Clymer, Richard Southwick, and Thomas Sutcliffe prosecuted the case.