Dubuque Woman Sentenced to Federal Prison After Hiding Gun for Her Brother

A Dubuque woman who purchased a gun for her brother and then hid it after it was used in a shooting was sentenced February 10, 2025, 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.

Information disclosed during the plea and sentencing hearings revealed that in March 2023, Lee purchased a Walther CCP M2, 9mm gun from a business in Dubuque.  When Lee filled out the paperwork to purchase the gun, she indicated that the gun was for her.  Lee actually purchased the gun for her brother, Marvin Brantley, a convicted felon.  Approximately three weeks later, in April 2023, 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. 

Law enforcement also determined that Lee had 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. 

Lee was sentenced in Cedar Rapids by Chief United States District Court Judge C.J. Williams.  Lee was sentenced to sixteen 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. On May 26, 2021, the Department launched a violent crime reduction strategy strengthening PSN based on these core principles: fostering trust and legitimacy in our communities, supporting community-based organizations that help prevent violence from occurring in the first place, setting focused and strategic enforcement priorities, and measuring the results.

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.  

Court file information at https://ecf.iand.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/login.pl.

The case file number is 24-CR-1016.

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