Good Thing The Judge Stopped Following Bruce Willis’ Career Somewhere Around M. Night Shyamalan’s Disappointing Followup To “The Sixth Sense”

Evade life sentences for murder and drug dealing by cribbing from Mos Def films:

A murderous drug kingpin standing before a Brooklyn federal judge and crying — Chaka Raysor was adding the last dollop of icing to a stirring autobiography of a crack maker turned cake baker. On the run for more than a decade after leading a Bed-Stuy drug gang thought to be responsible for more than 30 murders, Raysor claims to have spent most of his time as a fugitive right here in Brooklyn, despite being repeatedly featured on America’s Most Wanted. Once an expert at boiling cocaine into crack, Raysor says he learned to mix flour, eggs, sugar, and butter into tasty treats that he sold around the neighborhood. Topped with crude renderings of Dora the Explorer or Cookie Monster, the cakes for kids, he insists, taught him a life-changing lesson: “I didn’t need to sell drugs to survive.”

. . .

The lavish mitigation report, submitted by his defense team, tells of a nomadic decade during which Chaka Raysor always looked over his shoulder, too paranoid to contact his family but able to start a small business making birthday and wedding cakes. His murdered father, who Chaka imagined had been looking down from heaven all these years shaking his head in dismay at his son’s life, was finally proud of him.

“Powerful,” one prosecutor conceded. And it apparently struck the judge’s sweet tooth just right: Instead of the life-plus sentences that some of his lieutenants received, Raysor was given 17 years by an almost apologetic Vitaliano.

“I really don’t understand that,” says Louie Savarese, a retired NYPD detective who helped make the case against what was known as the Raysor Organization, only to spend the last 10 years of his career fruitlessly searching for the kingpin. “He should be doing double life — triple life — for all the crimes he has committed.”

But even Savarese admits that the return of Chaka — he turned himself in last year—and his sweet story are dramatic stuff, seemingly tailor-made for the silver screen. Or maybe that’s where it was stolen from.

In 16 Blocks (2006), small-time thief Eddie Bunker (Mos Def) tells detective Jack Mosely (Bruce Willis) how he plans to turn his life around: “I’m opening up a bakery. But it’s only like a specialty bakery. You know, like birthday cakes for little kids. There’s a lot of money in that.”

After his performance in court, Raysor wouldn’t say whether he’d caught that film, and his family wouldn’t comment for this story. But Raysor was known to constantly watch movie videos while bottling crack at his various drug dens, and he had operated a video store (albeit poorly stocked) as a front for his drug headquarters.