DA & Judge show no mercy to black teen who set an accidental fire that killed a cop...

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edited June 2016 in For The Grown & Sexy
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/15/nyregion/brooklyn-teenager-gets-19-years-to-life-for-fire-that-killed-officer.html
Brooklyn Teenager Gets 19 Years to Life for Fire That Killed Officer

Brooklyn teenager was sentenced on Tuesday to 19 years to life in prison for having set fire to a mattress in a hallway of his apartment building, resulting in the death of a police officer who responded to the blaze.

The young man, Marcell Dockery, sat still and silent in State Supreme Court in Brooklyn as Justice Danny K. Chun issued the sentence after scolding him for having killed the officer, Dennis Guerra, and having gravely injured his partner, Officer Rosa Rodriguez. “The saddest thing about this case,” Justice Chun said, was that the two officers had responded to the fire “because of their love for the job and their love for helping people in trouble, and because of that, Officer Guerra is dead.”

After a two-week trial in April and May, Mr. Dockery, now 18, was convicted of murder, assault and arson. The officers went to the apartment building, at 2007 Surf Avenue in Coney Island, after receiving a report about the fire on April 6, 2014. When the two entered the lobby, they saw no sign of flames and took an elevator to the 13th floor. Prosecutors introduced surveillance video at the trial of the thick black smoke that awaited them, and Officer Rodriguez testified that she had been unable to breathe in the hot, chaotic scene.

When Mr. Dockery was arrested shortly after the fire, he told the police that he had set it because he had been bored. Before the trial began, however, he accused the police of having coerced his confession. He continues to maintain that he is innocent.

Even though the prosecution acknowledged from the start that Mr. Dockery had not intended to ? or injure anyone, he was charged with what is known as felony murder, a provision of the law that permits a death to be considered a homicide if the killing occurs during the commission of another felony — in this case, both arson and assault.

Before Justice Chun issued the sentence, Cathy Guerra, Officer Guerra’s widow, addressed the court, saying that she often went to sleep crying and woke in the morning forced to put on a strong face for her children. Of Mr. Dockery, she said, “We know he did not mean to hurt anyone on that day,” but, she added, “there are others suffering the consequences.”

Then Howard Jackson, who prosecuted the case, told Justice Chun that he was “bothered and disturbed” that Mr. Dockery still refused to take responsibility for his crimes or even to show remorse. Instead of blaming himself, Mr. Jackson said, Mr. Dockery had placed blame on a shifting cast of others: the police, the district attorney and his own lawyer. “I find it quite alarming, Judge,” he said.

The district attorney’s office had recommended a sentence of 18 years to life in prison in part because Mr. Dockery had a history of arson, reaching back to junior high school, when, Mr. Jackson said, he created a makeshift blowtorch in his school cafeteria. “He has a problem that has lasted years, setting fires,” Mr. Jackson said, and yet refused to admit it.

Jesse A. Young, Mr. Dockery’s lawyer, in turn told Justice Chun that it was his client’s right to profess his innocence, even to show no remorse. “He is innocent,” Mr. Young said, “and will appeal.”

In a sentencing memo filed before the hearing, the prosecution noted one bright spot in Mr. Dockery’s behavior: After he had set the fire, he valiantly ran through the 13th-floor hallway warning his neighbors.

But Justice Chun, his voice unusually firm, took issue with that finding.

“I find nothing valiant about the defendant’s actions that day,” he said.



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