Self-confessed killer gets reduced prison sentence
TRENTON » The man who shot and killed 24-year-old Jahmir Hall had his 10-year prison sentence recently reduced thanks to a lenient judiciary.
Curtis J. Grier, 31, of Trenton, has been resentenced to seven years of incarceration for the 2014 slaying. He previously pleaded guilty to second-degree reckless manslaughter, admitting he fatally gunned Hall down about 12:30 a.m. April 19, 2014, in the streets of Trenton.
“Mr. Grier took it upon himself to arrange a reckoning,” Superior Court Judge Peter Warshaw said Nov. 10, 2016, when he sentenced the self-confessed killer to 10 years of state imprisonment. Months later, however, Warshaw reconsidered his judgment of conviction after the Appellate Division intervened.
Grier, who has already served more than one year at South Woods State Prison, received delayed leniency last month when Warshaw revisited the case on Appellate Division orders. Warshaw found Grier to be less dangerous at the Feb. 22 resentencing hearing.
Whenever a Superior Court judge sentences a defendant, the court always considers whether aggravating factors support a harsher punishment or whether mitigating factors support a more lenient punishment. Warshaw originally said the aggravating factors against Grier outweighed the mitigating factors and used that rationale when handing down the initial 10-year prison sentence.
But after the Appellate Division remanded the case back to Warshaw for resentencing, the Superior Court judge easily found the aggravating factors, including risk of Grier committing another offense, to be “in balance” Daniel McCargo
with the mitigating factors, which included the undisputed fact that Grier had no history of prior delinquency or criminal activity before the commission of the April 2014 homicide.
Warshaw resentenced Grier to seven years of state incarceration pursuant to the No Early Release Act requiring him to serve 85 percent of the maximum term before being paroled. Grier will then be subjected to three years of parole supervision upon release. Grier received four days of jail credit and 469 days of prior service credit, which means he has less than five years to go before release.
While the resentencing gave Grier a reduced prison sentence, it also imposed on him a greater monetary punishment. Grier at resentencing got hammered with a $5,000 assessment payable to the New Jersey Victims of Crime Compensation Office. The original sentencing called for him to pay about $200 in fees and penalties, according to court records.
“To be fair and in the interests of justice,” Warshaw wrote in his resentencing judgment of conviction, “the Court will impose the recommended sentence in accordance with the plea agreement.”