Jennings was sentenced to three to nine years after pleading guilty to sex trafficking in Queens.

A prison term after a guilty plea is the judgment of the court on the count admitted. It is not a jury trial on every original indictment charge. QNS reported that Leighton Jennings, 36, of Jamaica, Queens, pleaded guilty to sex trafficking on the eve of trial and was sentenced Thursday to three to nine years, with sex-offender registration required on release. Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz’s office described false promises of housing and childcare used to take prostitution proceeds. Those are the plea and the DA’s account behind the sentence.

On Thursday, Oct. 1, 2026, Queens Supreme Court Justice Peter Vallone Jr. sentenced Leighton Jennings to three to nine years in prison for sex trafficking, QNS reported, citing the Queens District Attorney’s Office. Jennings had pleaded guilty to sex trafficking on the eve of trial. Under the sentence covered by QNS, he must register as a sex offender upon release. A sentence after a guilty plea is the judgment on the admitted count.

According to the Queens DA’s charging narrative, later summarized at sentencing coverage, Jennings met a 25-year-old woman in July 2024, promised housing, supplies, job training, and childcare, and took $500 to $1,000 a day from her prostitution proceeds. Instead of securing the promised apartment, he moved her into a Pomonok Houses unit and later refused to allow her infant to live there, the DA’s account says. He took proceeds from prostitution activity in Brooklyn and at a Queens motel during the periods described in that account.

The original December 2025 indictment also included promoting prostitution, strangulation, and rape counts. The Thursday sentence reported by QNS is on the sex-trafficking guilty plea. It is not a jury finding on every count that was once charged. The adult victim is not named here. No photo of the victim is used.