Serial drug dealer from Dorchester gets 12 years in prison after getting caught selling meth in Boston and Cambridge

A federal judge yesterday sentenced Vincent Lambert, 41, to 12 years in prison after he pleaded guilty to three counts related to the meth he sold a buyer working with the feds on either side of the Charles, the US Attorney's office in Boston reports.

Lambert pleaded guilty in June to two counts of possession of 50 or more grams of meth with intent to distribute and one count of possession of 5 grams of meth with intent to distribute after making sales in March and April, 2023.

On June 7, 2023, the US Attorney's office adds, investigators with a search warrant found nearly two and a half pounds of meth, almost ten pounds of the date-rape drug butanediol and smaller amounts of fentanyl, ketamine, cocaine and MDMA in Lambert's room in a Dorchester rooming house.

Even as federal agents were tracking Lambert, he was on the lam for parole violations related to his 2019 conviction in Suffolk Superior Court, which netted him a three-year state-prison term, on charges that included possession of meth and cocaine with intent to distribute - after he cut off Transit Police officers in their cruiser at Summer and Lincoln streets downtown and they pulled him over. In addition to finding drugs in his cars, the officers discovered he was wanted on warrants out of Dorchester and Cambridge courts on drug charges.

The 2019 conviction came after convictions in 2017 in West Roxbury Municipal Court and 2019 in Cambridge District Court on drug charges, the US Attorney's office says.

In a sentencing memorandum to Judge Indira Talwani, Assistant US Attorney Sam Feldman argued for a 15-year sentence, essentially saying enough is enough:

The defendant simply has not gotten the message despite repeated interventions from the courts. Defendant's criminal history reflects serious convictions, jail time, and probationary sentences, that have only resulted in more criminal conduct. The only effect these interventions had was to cause the defendant to be more cautious, using fake names and encrypted applications like Signal (as was used in this case). At the time he began selling crystal meth to the cooperator in this case, Lambert was only 4 years removed from his last conviction involving crystal meth (and guns), and fresh out of jail. Without a doubt, defendant was himself a user with a complicated family and emotional history. That does not give him the right to sell to others and hurt the community with his crystal meth. This Court should impose a significant term of imprisonment to deter this defendant from ever again engaging in drug trafficking.

Lambert's attorney, Cara McNamara, however, argued for a sentence of 11 years.

Lambert, she said, grew up in an abusive household and sold drugs only to support his own intractable drug addiction and to ease his mental illness, she wrote. In fact, she wrote, "Vincent Lambert’s childhood description is of abuse is shocking in its duration, cruelty, and depravity." She then describes just what was done to him, but those paragraphs are redacted from the public copy of her sentencing memorandum. From marijuana use as a pre-teen, he graduated to a series of other drugs, at the time of his arrest, fentanyl, PCP, MDMA and benzodiazepine.

To say it bluntly - he suffers from profound drug addiction and requires intensive dual diagnosis treatment.

An 11-year sentence, she argued, would be more than sufficient to punish Lambert for what he did - while giving him the chance to get into treatment, especially now that he has reconciled with his mother. And it would serve as a deterrent to others considering a similar life path, she wrote.

The requested sentence of 11 years in prison adequately reflects the seriousness of this criminal conduct. There is no mistaking that a 132 month sentence is a stern and serious sentence. For this defendant, an additional 2-3 year sentence beyond the 11 years proposed will not meaningfully add anything not adequately addressed by an 11-year sentence. The goals of punishment, isolation, and protection are addressed by a sentence of 132 months. It will be the responsibility of the conditions of supervised release to address the balance of the sentencing goals – rehabilitation.

Personal and general deterrence are both satisfied with a sentence of 132 months – the public's reaction to a sentence of 11 years for the conduct of possession and sale of drugs by a drug-addicted individual will be a significant deterrent. Simply put, Mr. Lambert does require incarceration for more than 11 years in order to satisfy this sentencing factor.

By the time he is released, Mr. Lambert will be in his fifties, making him statistically unlikely to reoffend. For that reason, a sentence of 132 months followed by supervision is adequate to protect the public from further crimes.