New sentence for young defendant in drive-by shooting that killed Tacoma teen
A young man convicted in the fatal drive-by shooting of a 19-year-old bystander in Tacoma received a new sentence Thursday.
Jermohnn Elijah Nathaniel Gore, 22, was originally sentenced to 82 years in prison for the shooting that killed Brandon Morris. He was one of six charged and sentenced in the case, and prosecutors said he was one of the shooters.
Superior Court Judge Stephanie Arend resentenced him to 35 years after a three-judge panel of the state Court of Appeals said Gore needed a new special sentencing hearing for a judge to consider his youth at the time of the offense.
He was 16 on May 1, 2015, when prosecutors said Morris was hit in a retaliatory gang shooting outside a convenience store at South 45th Street and South Puget Sound Avenue.
In response to changes in juvenile justice law, the new sentencing hearing had to consider “Gore’s immaturity, impetuosity, failure to appreciate risks and consequences, Gore’s family and home environment, the extent of Gore’s participation in the crime, peer pressures,” and his ability to assist his attorney — which were not specifically considered at Gore’s first sentencing, the appellate ruling said.
The six people convicted in the case ranged in age from 15 to 23 years at the time of the shooting and got sentences that ranged from about 12 to 84 years.
Gore was among those that went to trial and was found guilty by jurors of first-degree murder for Morris’ death and four counts of first-degree assault for others present who could have been shot.
Deputy prosecutor Greg Greer wrote in a new sentencing memorandum that gang shootings “fit a predictable pattern involving misguided youth using guns and violence to establish/maintain street credibility, retaliate, and/or react violently to the concept of ‘disrespect.’ Very frequently, as is the case here, innocent people are killed.”
Greer wrote that Morris “was not in a gang and was doing nothing wrong at the time of his murder. Brandon and his friends were merely walking by an apartment complex, in broad daylight, when suddenly Brandon was shot in the head and killed.”
Defense attorney Stephen G. Johnson wrote in a sentencing brief this week that there was domestic violence in Gore’s childhood home and that he spent time in foster care.
Johnson wrote that he “… marvels at the thought process by which one associates with a ‘gang.’ In the defendant’s case, it is not unreasonable to conclude that the human desire for family is strong and overwhelming. This is, sadly, a too common tale for us in the justice system.”
He argued for a sentence that would allow Gore to be released at age 30.
The challenge, he told the court, was to come up with a sentence that “clearly communicates society’s expectation that ‘Thou shalt not murder,’” gives the victim’s family justice, and doesn’t “utterly destroy a person for wildly immature impulses and actions.”
