Sentence upheld in barroom homicide

Court rejects claim of ‘harsh and excessive’ punishment

The admitted triggerman in an Easter 2014 revenge killing in a New Paltz bar has been denied an appeal of his sentence.

In a ruling handed down Thursday, the Appellate Division of state Supreme Court, Third Judicial Department, unanimously rejected Basheem Bennett’s claim that the sentence of 25 years to life in state prison imposed on him on Nov. 13, 2015, was “harsh and excessive.”

Ulster County Court Judge Donald A. Williams sentenced Bennett, now 25, after the defendant violated the terms of a plea agreement under which he was to receive an 18-year sentence.

Bennett pleaded guilty to second-degree murder on Nov. 10, 2014, and was to receive the lesser sentence in exchange for testifying at the trial of Taquan Webb, who authorities said provided him with the murder weapon and disposed of it afterward.

Bennett didn’t testify, though, and Webb was acquitted on Oct. 27, 2014, in Ulster County Court of second-degree murder and felony assault.

Because he failed to comply with the terms of the plea deal, Williams sentenced Bennett to the maximum allowed by law.

The appellate court said

it was upholding the sentence because Bennett, in pleading guilty, waived his right to appeal.

Early on April 20, 2014, Ryan Gray, 29, of Poughkeepsie, was shot by Bennett inside of Murphy’s Bar at 107 Main St. in the village of New Paltz. Gray’s fiancée and the mother of his child, Ida Samantha David, 26, of Wappingers Falls, was seriously wounded in a shooting.

Witnesses told authorities that Bennett entered the bar, spotted Gray and fired three shots from a 9mm handgun, the Ulster County District Attorney’s Office said Thursday. Gray was struck in the chest and neck, and David was struck in the chest.

Just days after the shooting, in announcing Bennett’s

arrest, police and prosecutors pointed to possible links between Bennett and Gray and a November 2013 fatal shooting in Poughkeepsie.

Ulster County District Attorney Holley Carnright said at the time that the victim in the Poughkeepsie case was Alvin Hayles, but he would not elaborate on the relationship between the two homicides or on Gray’s possible involvement in Hayles’ death.

On Thursday, Carnright’s office said the motive for the crime was “retaliation by Bennett against Gray for the murder of a friend of Bennett’s six month earlier in the city of Poughkeepsie.”

Bennett is serving his sentence at the Five Points Correctional Facility in Romulus, N.Y.