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Killer gets life in prison
Gang member who shot bridegroom sentenced to term without parole
| Monday, Mar 12 2007 10:25 PM
Last Updated: Monday, Mar 12 2007 10:31 PM
A Bakersfield gang member was sentenced to life in prison without parole Monday morning in the shooting death of a Sacramento bridegroom on the way to his bachelor party in Las Vegas.
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Ted Blackmon
Venus Dross, left, fiancee of Damon Moore who was shot and killed by Ted Blackmon, talks to her mother Debra Dross, outside superior court after Blackmon's sentencing.
Ted Blackmon's mother Annamarie Eaton, right, and his grandmother Etter Cotton, commented after he was sentenced for the shooting of Damon Moore.
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An emotional courtroom statement from the victim's fiancee highlighted the tragic circumstances of the 2005 murder, in which the bridegroom's powder-blue shirt was seen by the shooter as a rival gang member's colors, prosecutors said.
Jurors last month found Ted Blackmon, 26, guilty of first-degree murder for the killing of businessman Damon Moore, 27.
Moore was shot twice in the back of the head as he slept in the front passenger seat of a rental car at the Citgo/Jack in the Box on Union Avenue, just north of Highway 58.
His fiancee, Venus Dross, told the court Monday she and Moore had spent hours working out the right wording for their wedding invitations just days before the killing.
"The night of the murder, the invitations were sent out," Dross said, crying at times as she spoke.
Five days later -- on the couple's anniversary -- she and Moore's family were planning a funeral, she told Kern County Superior Court Judge Clarence Westra Jr.
"A week later we put his body in the ground," Dross said, adding: "Every day since I've wanted to be there with him."
Blackmon also was sentenced to 30 years to life for the attempted murder of a woman traveling with the victim -- Blackmon shot at her but missed -- and to more than four years for possession of a firearm by a felon. Sentences on each count carried enhancements that together add decades of additional time. Blackmon will serve the sentences consecutively, Westra ruled.
Defense attorney Michael Dellostritto said he will file an appeal.
Before sentencing Monday, the judge also denied Dellostritto's motion for a new trial.
Dellostritto's request was based on the same themes he had presented to jurors. He questioned the reliability of identifications made by Moore's shocked friends and said no witnesses saw tattoos on the shooter. Blackmon's arms and legs are tattooed with dark ink.
The defense has maintained that another gang member, Eric Bender, is the real shooter.
Both Blackmon and Bender are members of the East Side Crips, prosecutors and defense agreed, a mostly black gang on Bakersfield's east side. East Side Crips are at war with Country Boy Crips, a group that sports powder blue as its color, police testified during the trial.
Westra, in denying the defense's request for a new trial, said he had been particularly impressed with the testimony of Kathy Crump, whom Blackmon fired at after shooting Moore.
"The court was quite impressed with her ability to articulate why she believed Mr. Blackmon was the perpetrator," Westra said.
Evidence and upset
Crump's testimony included a detailed description of the shooter's yellowish ankle-high shoes -- a hybrid hiking boot and tennis shoe cross -- that matched shoes Blackmon wore to East Hills Mall hours after the murder, a visit captured on the mall's surveillance system showed.
Crump was one of four people in the car, including Moore, when the group stopped here for gas around 1:15 a.m. on July 15, 2005.
Blackmon's mother, sister and grandmother railed against the outcome and insisted Blackmon was wrongly convicted.
They highlighted inconsistencies such as one witness's inaccurate description of the shooter's hair style and facial hair.
"If you have a gun in somebody's face, how you not gonna see exactly what they look like?" said Blackmon's sister, Serina Blackmon. "How are you just looking straight down a barrel of a gun and can't see their face?"
"There was nothing that put my son at that Citgo station -- nothing," said Annamarie Eaton, Blackmon's mother.
"This courtroom here, it should be down in the heart of Mississippi," said Etter Cotton, Blackmon's grandmother. "Down in the heart of Mississippi, where they were dragging people."
Moore's parents, Debbie and Jules Moore, declined to talk to reporters after the sentencing. Previously, Debbie Moore has said they hoped for a life-without-parole sentence so Blackmon couldn't hurt anyone else.
Moore's cousin, Quiana Canada, gave a short courtroom statement on behalf of the family thanking prosecutors, police, the jury and the judge for their efforts and highlighting the family's faith in God.
"You will make a correct and just decision for our family," Canada told Westra.
Prosecutor Garrett Hamilton, who handled the case for the Kern County District Attorney's office before his recent move to Yolo County, said he saw many gang killings during his years in Kern.
Hamilton was especially grateful for the courage of eyewitnesses who testified despite being "almost murdered themselves."
"This case is the ultimate example of the terrorism that gangs" are trying to impose on "our freedom to live peacefully," Hamilton said.