A North Dakota teenager was sentenced Thursday to life in prison with the possibility of parole after a jury found him guilty last year in the September 2022 shooting death of a man at a Bismarck motel.
State District Court Judge James Hill said he could not throw out the jury's verdict against Jesse Taylor Jr., who was 16 at the time of the fatal shooting of Maurice Thunder Shield, 28, of McLaughlin, South Dakota. The judge also questioned Taylor's attorney's characterization of him when he was a child, according to The Bismarck Tribune.
“You were a child who used a 9mm firearm to shoot five bullets at another human being,” the judge told Taylor. “The court heard the testimony in this case and, frankly, it was overwhelming. An innocent person's life was taken in a senseless act of brutal and extreme violence. Self-defense has been argued to me here, but it was nonexistent. There “No “There was no credible testimony that you were threatened, and that is what the jury found beyond a reasonable doubt.”
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Taylor declined to speak at his sentencing. He will be eligible to have his sentence reduced after serving 20 years because she was a minor when the crime occurred. He will also be eligible to be considered for parole after turning about 55 years old.
The judge criticized Taylor's self-defense argument, noting that there was no credible testimony of a threat. (FoxNews)
Taylor's attorney said at trial that the teen acted in self-defense after a verbal altercation with Thunder Shield. The prosecutor said that argument had no legal basis, that Taylor could have escaped from Thunder Shield and that he intended to kill him by firing the gun five times in several seconds, the newspaper previously reported.
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Taylor was also convicted of aggravated assault for allegedly wounding a motel worker in the shooting, and sentenced to five years in prison for that crime, to be served concurrently.
