A Brooklyn drug dealer who bribed three witnesses in a 2002 murder trial has been sentenced to 37 years in prison for masterminding an upstate crack cocaine enterprise.

The sentencing yesterday of Dupree Harris, 33, was for crimes that he committed between 2000 and 2002, before he emerged at the center of an investigation involving a 2002 murder trial in which one witness was killed and others were bribed.

Harris was convicted in 2004 of bribing three witnesses in the state trial of his half-brother, Wesley Sykes, who was ultimately convicted in a schoolyard murder. Another man, Trevis Ragsdale, with no proven link to Harris, was ultimately convicted of murdering the witness to the murder, Bobby Gibson.

Judge Allyne Ross of U.S. District Court in Brooklyn said yesterday that Harris was the head of a group of criminals that sold crack in upstate Glens Falls.

Harris, who is known as “Turf,” is said to have been a leader of the Bloods street gang in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, an allegation that his lawyer denies.

He faced between 30 years and life in prison, according to federal guidelines that take into account his lengthy criminal history.

The sentencing lasted about two hours, during which time Harris stood still. He appeared most comfortable with his hands resting in the small of his back as though they were handcuffed — which they were not. He broke that pose to cover his mouth while coughing and to remove his glasses mid-way through the sentencing.

He spoke only once, to deliver a plea for leniency that he broke short.

“I’m a human being,” he said. Referring to the prosecutors, he added: “I’m not the monster that those people want me to be. I want you to take that into consideration.”

His lawyer, Stacey Richman, said that “a lot of tarnish” surrounded his name, but that prosecutors have never proven their most serious allegations against him.

At one point, Ms. Richman described Harris as the sort of man who sends Christmas cards.

One prosecutor, Lee Freedman, agreed with Ms. Richman on that point, but said that the one known Christmas card Harris had sent had been to a crack dealer in his employ.

“Every moment this man has been on the outside, he has been an agent of crime,” Mr. Freedman said. “There’s no way to stop him but to confine him. If he’s permitted to spend one more day out of confinement that’s another day people are at risk.”