I-Team: World's oldest drug mule begs for mercy

CHICAGO (WLS) -- For several years the ABC7 I-Team has been following the case of the world's oldest drug mule.

Leo Sharp from northwest Indiana is 90 years old. Next week the government will ask that he be sent to jail.

The I-Team first met Sharp after he was busted in 2011 with a delivery of cocaine in his pick-up truck, the drugs straight from Mexico's Sinaloa cartel and headed from the border, where Sharp had picked them up, to metro Detroit, where he was to drop them off. Michigan State Police nabbed him for an improper lane change. The world's oldest drug mule, as cartel couriers are known, pleaded guilty. And next Wednesday he will be sentenced in federal court in Detroit. On Friday, Leo Sharp is begging for mercy.

It was springtime a couple years ago when we met Sharp and he showed off the day lilies that made him a cult figure in the flower business.

This was at the home the government intends to let him keep, despite his cocaine conviction. The government does want to send the 90-year-old Sharp away from here for five years for driving some drugs north, which is less than what they would ask for a younger mule.

In this sentencing memo from Sharp's lawyers obtained Friday by the I-Team, he is asking for home confinement and little, if any, prison time. They call him a "model citizen, war hero, world-famous plant hybridizer, great grandfather, colorful, and a self-made, charitable man who made a monumental mistake."

They are submitting evidence of his military service and World War II record including a bronze star for heroism, the ribbons he received for growing day lilies, a picture of him with Laura Bush from his Republican volunteer work and photos of Sharp as he looked following a 2012 fall. They say he has dementia, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, skin cancer, cataracts, memory loss, a thyroid problem and is hard of hearing.

According to his attorneys, "Sharp clearly lacks a propensity to commit crimes; he is not beyond rehabilitation; and he is highly unlikely to recidivate."

Sharp recently told a court-approved psychiatrist what he told the I-Team two years ago: that he doesn't plan to be in prison for long.

Sharp: "I'm just going to end it all. Period."

Goudie: "What do you mean you're going to end it all?"

Sharp: "I'm going to get a **** gun and shoot myself in the mouth or my ear, one or the other. I won't live in a toilet with bars, ever."

Sharp says he was on social security and needed the money, but claims the cartel made him deliver drugs. He did it more than once. He now says he is "dreadfully sorry."

So should a decorated war veteran, who apparently lived an exemplary life for eight decades, be sent to prison because of what he did in his late 80's? Especially since he is in such poor health? That is the question to be answered by District Judge Nancy Edmunds in Detroit next week.