Convicted killer gets life behind bars under N.J.’s Three Strikes law - NJ.com
A Trenton man who gunned down a 30-year-old at one of Trenton’s highest crime intersections in 2019 was recently sentenced to a life term in state prison, the Mercer County Prosecutor’s Office announced.
The prosecutor’s office successfully argued for an enhanced penalty for Hamilton Morgan, 40, via the state’s Three Strikes law. Mercer County Judge Darlene Pereksta made it official on Feb. 17, the office announced. The judge also sentenced Morgan to 10 years on for firearm crimes.
New Jersey’s Three Strikes law allows judges to sentence offenders to life in prison without parole if the person has two prior and separate convictions for violent or serious crimes.
Morgan has a lengthy and violent past in Trenton, records and news accounts show.
A Mercer jury convicted Morgan in August 2021 of murder and related charges in the May 2019 shooting death of Maurice Rowe at the intersection of Stuyvesant and Hoffman avenues in the city’s west side.
Two Trenton detectives, John Carrigg and Stephen Szbanz, were in the area for another call when they heard gunshots, raced toward them and spotted a man, later identified as Morgan, fleeing the area. They detained him on a nearby street with a handgun, officials have said.
At the time of his 2019 arrest, Morgan had been out of prison less than two years after serving an 18-year term for a multitude of crimes for a multi-month spree of violence in Trenton in late 2000 in which he wounded three people.
During that spree, Morgan tried to run down a city police officer in a stolen car, robbed a Chinese restaurant and fired at fleeing employees, shot up a car with a rifle, robbed and wounded three teens in two separate hold ups and pistol-whipped a gas station attendant in a robbery, records show.
When the 2000 charges were moving through the court system, Morgan pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit a carjacking in a separate case and a judge sentenced to a seven-year term.
Senior assistant prosecutors Stacey M. Geurds and Kathleen M. Petrucci, who prosecuted Morgan twenty years ago, handled the case along with Assistant Prosecutor Narline Casimir.
An attorney representing Morgan could not immediately be reached for comment.
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source: https://www.nj.com/mercer/2022/02/convicted-killer-gets-life-behind-bars-under-njs-three-strikes-law.html
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