A judge sent a 19-year-old man to jail for 40 years Monday for firing the bullet that killed 13-year-old Jajuana Cole last summer. Jajuana’s best friend, Tavare Wilcher (pictured outside after the sentencing), broke down while trying to address the heavily guarded courtroom in a proceeding that called into question what families can, and can’t, seem to do about youth violence in New Haven.
Jajuana Cole was shot to death, an innocent bystander, outside a Dickerman Street party last June 17. She was one of two 13-year-olds cut down by stray bullets last summer in cases that provoked outrage citywide and calls for addressing youth violence.
The painful story came to a close Monday morning in Judge Richard A. Damiani’s sixth-floor state courtroom on Church Street. Damiani rejected an appeal to go light on shooter Daniel Carter — “light” meaning 35 years instead of 40.
Eleven guards ringed the courtroom during the sentencing, which took less than an hour.
Carter was one of five members of the ‘Ville gang who descended on the Dickerman Street party that night in search of a rival gang member. Another fired five bullets into the crowd of young people on the street. Then Carter fired five more bullets from a .380 automatic, one of which took Jajuana’s life. Jajuana had been hanging out with friends at the party.
Daniel Carter has a different history from many of the young men who appear before judges like Damiani to be sentenced for felonies. He has a different history from some of his friends whom Damiani sentenced last Friday in connection with Jajuana’s shooting
Carter had never been arrested before. He had no record of drug or alcohol problems. He comes from what prosecutor and defense attorney alike Monday described as a model, engaged, two-parent family.
“This is so out of character for someone coming from such as supportive family,” said prosecutor Kevin Doyle. He added that he felt that was no excuse for Damiani to go easy on Carter. “He gave it up to be part of a group” — the ‘Ville — “willing … to open fire on a crowd of young girls… to show how tough they were.”
“Mr. Carter’s family,” Doyle noted, “will get to visit him in jail.” Jajuana’s extended family and close friends — 14 of whom filled the jury box during the sentencing — won’t get to see her anymore, he said.
“Up until [last June] he was an All-American boy. They could have made a movie about him and his family,” Judge Damiani said of Carter. He then spoke of a video the ‘Ville members took of the evening, showing Carter and others waving guns and firing them, showing the gang “trash-talking,” showing the girls on Dickerman Street shrieking in horror as they fled the bullets. “The video is not only disturbing,” Damiani said. “It’s downright scary.”
Damiani pointed out to Carter that when his term ends, he’ll be 59 years old. His now 8‑month-old son will be almost 41. “Your mother is going to die while you’re in jail. Your oldest sibling will be 63.”
And his father is already dead. Within a day of learning that his son had fired the fatal shot, he died of a “massive heart attack,” according to his brother, Harvey Ward Jr. (pictured outside the courthouse). “He couldn’t bear to know that his son was the one who pulled the trigger.”
Ward said the family had hoped that by pleading guilty, Carter could get 35, not 40 years. They made a gamble. They thought they might be able to cast reasonable doubt that Carter had indeed fired the fatal shot. (Police never recovered the other gun.) But it would be a tough case, and the video was incriminating, Ward said — meaning Carter could have received as many as 65 years in jail, effectively a “death sentence.”
In the face of overwhelming evidence against his client, defense attorney Rick Silverstein (pictured) appealed to the judge to consider the influence of peers in today’s urban society.
“You don’t spend all your time with your family,” Silverstein said. “You don’t spend all your time in church. You spend most of your time with your friends… In New Haven, if you’re young and black, and you’re raised in this city, you can fall very easily into bad company.”
“People are a lot more than the worst thing they’ve done,” Silverstein said. He spoke of the state trend toward stiffer sentences for teens. “We sentence them to periods of time when redemption becomes impossible.” He and Carter’s brother and uncle appealed for a 35-year, not 40-year, sentence.
Carter, his hands cuffed behind his back, addressed the court briefly. “I’m truly sorry” for killing Jajuana Cole, he said. “I realize I have to do some time” for a “terrible act.”
Jajuana’s stepfather, Jay Keen (pictured), and Jajuana’s friend Tavare (pictured at the top of this story), who was with her the night of the murder, argued after the sentencing that Carter deserved a stiffer sentence than the other defendants because he was the most responsible.
Judge Damiani said from the bench that he felt he couldn’t sentence Carter to fewer than the 40 years he gave another key defendant who fired into the Dickerman Street crowd, since it was Carter’s bullet that apparently killed Jajuana.
On the other hand, he told Carter, “If I give you one or two more years, that’s like putting a price on Jajuana’s life.”
A common theme was sounded by judge, defense attorney, and Carter’s relatives: exasperation about what can be done to turn around the trend of ever-younger, ever-more-hardened teens shooting each other. Apostle Eugene Brunson, who spoke on behalf of the Carter family at the sentencing, feels especially torn by the violence. The Carter family attends his Wayfarer Ministries church. So do relatives of Jajuana Cole. Brunson speaks regularly at anti-violence rallies in town. He has also for years run a prison ministry.
“We are family,” Brunson told the court. “We have to start shutting things down. Forty years is not going to solve the problem.”
Twin sisters Sherrell and Raquel Austin (pictured), 17, took the day off from Wilbur Cross High School to attend court — and watch a man they know from church be sentenced for killing their cousin.
Before court began, they ticked off the list of other friends and relatives whose lives were cut short amid the youth violence on New Haven’s streets. The other 13-year-old killed by a stray bullet last summer, Justus Suggs, is their third cousin (from the other side of the family from Jajuana). Their first cousin Ebony Weston was shot dead, in the chest, two years ago at 19 years old. Their close friend Terrence Boyd was shot in the head.
“I make a big choice, about who I hang out with, where I hang out,” Raquel said. “I don’t go to parties. Every time you go to a party, somebody’s fighting, somebody gets shot.”
How does she feel as a teen not socializing with friends more?
“It’s normal. Not every teenager goes to parties and hangs out,” she said. She begins a job June 4 with LEAP. She has applied for a second summer job, at Marshalls and TJ Maxx. No parties scheduled.
They should all be put in for 200 years without possibility of parole. That might teach people a lesson about guns. The penalty for having an illegal gun in possession, too, should be a mandatory 10 years.