Delicia Lee, Tampering With Evidence, Iowa 2025

A Dubuque woman who purchased a gun for her brother and then hid it after it was used in a shooting was sentenced to over a year in prison. Delicia Lee, age 36, from Dubuque, Iowa, received the prison term after a September 17, 2024, guilty plea to tampering with evidence.

According to the investigation, Lee purchased a Walther CCP M2, 9mm gun from a business in Dubuque in March 2023. However, she indicated on the paperwork that the gun was for her, when in fact it was for her brother, Marvin Brantley, a convicted felon. Approximately three weeks later, Brantley was involved in a fight and fired the gun at a group of people outside a bar in Dubuque. No one was injured.

Brantley hid the gun in the ceiling of his basement before being arrested on state charges related to the shooting. In jail phone calls between Brantley and Lee, Brantley walked Lee, step-by-step, to the location of the gun in his residence. After she found it, he told her to wipe it down and get rid of it. Lee drove the gun to a residence in Chicago. Later, investigators searched her residence looking for the gun. Lee admitted that the gun was in Chicago. At law enforcement’s request, she turned the gun into police one week later.

Lee was also found to have purchased 15 guns between 2017 and 2020 in Indiana. These firearms were purchased by Lee for others prohibited from purchasing the guns themselves. More than half of the firearms were recovered after they were used in criminal conduct, including, but not limited to, homicide, kidnapping, robbery, and, in one instance, to shoot a police officer. Several of the firearms have not been recovered.

Marvin Brantley was later charged in the Northern District of Iowa with felon in possession of a firearm. In April 2024, Brantley was sentenced to 145 months’ imprisonment for being a felon in possession of a firearm and his role in the shooting.

Delicia Lee was sentenced in Cedar Rapids by Chief United States District Court Judge C.J. Williams. She was sentenced to 16 months’ imprisonment. She must also serve a three-year term of supervised release after the prison term. There is no parole in the federal system.

This case is part of Project Safe Neighborhoods (PSN), a program bringing together all levels of law enforcement and the communities they serve to reduce violent crime and gun violence, and to make our neighborhoods safer for everyone.

The case was prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Ashley Corkery and investigated by the Dubuque Police Department and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives.

Mandatory Facts: Delicia Lee, tampering with evidence, Dubuque, Iowa, 2/10/2025, 16 months’ imprisonment, 3-year term of supervised release.

Source: https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndia/pr/dubuque-woman-sentenced-federal-prison-after-hiding-gun-her-brother