By Madeleine O’Neill
Erie Times-News, Pa.
A defendant who has served more than 21 years of a life sentence for murder will be back in Erie County Court Monday to learn if he will ever be eligible for parole.
Now 39, the defendant, Michael G. Crosby, was six days shy of his 18th birthday when he fatally shot 19-year-old Demetrius Johnson on June 27, 1996, in what prosecutors called a contract-style killing.
Crosby’s conviction of first-degree murder in the case -- and the mandatory sentence of life without parole that followed -- make him one of Erie County’s nine “juvenile lifers,” whose mandatory life sentences for murders committed before they turned 18 years old were ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court five years ago.
He will be the first of the county’s juvenile lifers to be resentenced, with others to follow in the coming months.
The Erie County District Attorney’s Office is asking that Judge John Garhart reimpose Crosby’s life sentence without the possibility of parole.
“The murder of Demetrius Johnson was a cold, calculated, unprovoked killing which illuminates defendant’s violent nature,” Assistant District Attorney Erin Connelly wrote in a sentencing memorandum filed Thursday.
The defense is requesting that Garhart make Crosby eligible for parole. His lawyer, Assistant Public Defender Nicole Sloane, asked in a sentencing memorandum that Crosby be resentenced to 20 to 40 years in prison, which would make him eligible for parole because he has already served 21 years. The state parole board would decide whether Crosby should be released.
Crosby will testify at the resentencing hearing, according to the memorandum, as will a “mitigation specialist” hired by the defense to research Crosby’s background.
Sloane also included a letter from Michael Outlaw, a case manager at the Erie County Re-Entry Services and Support Alliance, that states Crosby would be eligible to receive re-entry assistance through the program if he were made eligible for parole and eventually released.
The letter states that Crosby has obtained his GED and teaches drug and alcohol classes at the State Correctional Institution at Huntingdon, where he has been incarcerated.
But Connelly in her memorandum pointed to Crosby’s prior record, which includes an adjudication for an assault committed as a juvenile. She also pointed to Crosby’s record of misconducts while incarcerated, with the most recent in 2015.
A jury convicted Crosby of first-degree murder, conspiracy, carrying a firearm without a license and possession of the instrument of a crime in July 1999. The prosecution argued that a co-defendant offered Crosby $4,000 to kill Johnson, although no money was exchanged, after Johnson robbed the co-defendant’s brother of $50 and several bags of marijuana the day before the murder.
Crosby was convicted of shooting Johnson, 19, three times in the face on a sidewalk in the 500 block of East 22nd Street. The prosecution sought the death penalty, but jurors declined to impose the sentence.
Crosby was sentenced to life without parole on the murder charge plus an additional four and a half to nine years to be served consecutively for the other charges. Crosby’s co-defendant, Shelby Zablotny, was 22 at the time of the killing and was also sentenced to life in prison as an accomplice.
Sloane said Friday she is seeking a sentence of 20 to 40 years for all of the charges of which Crosby was convicted, not just the murder.
The U.S. Supreme Court in 2012 ruled mandatory sentences of life without parole unconstitutional for juveniles, and in January 2016 ruled that the ban is retroactive, making juvenile lifers throughout the United States eligible for resentencing.
The Pennsylvania Department of Corrections reported that as of Sept. 8, out of the state’s more than 500 juvenile lifers -- the largest number of any state, according to the department -- 125 had been resentenced, and 76 had been released.
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(c)2017 the Erie Times-News (Erie, Pa.)