A Maricopa County Superior Court judge sentenced a Phoenix man to 13 years in prison for manslaughter after he admitted to chasing him off his mother’s property and stabbing him to death.
Darius Moore, 27, pleaded guilty to manslaughter against Fredrick Morris on May 5 after a nine-day trial ended in miscarriage of justice.
Under the plea bargain, he was sentenced to 10 to 21 years in prison.
On Friday, Maricopa County Superior Court Judge David Cunanan sentenced Moore to 13 years in prison.
Murder of Morris
On May 15, 2021, Moore was asleep in his car parked in his mother’s driveway. According to court documents, he and his sister had an argument and were not allowed inside.
Moore woke up to the sound of Morris knocking on the car window. According to court records, Moore told Morris to “leave him alone” and instructed him to leave.
Moore’s attorney, Kyle Greene, said Moore heard gunshots shortly before Morris approached and was worried because he had been shot before.
Morris did not return, but Moore got into an argument with Morris. At one point during the struggle, Moore took out a long knife and stabbed Morris more than 20 times.
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An autopsy report said Morris was under the influence of drugs when he approached Moore.
Morris tried to escape, but Moore chased after him and killed him on the lawn across from Moore’s car.
The state initially charged Mr. Moore with second-degree murder, which under state law means that Mr. Moore intended to kill him because he was chasing Morris. During the trial, however, Green argued that the murder was sudden and reckless, and that it would be more appropriate to qualify it as manslaughter.
The case went to trial, but was declared a miscarriage of justice after several jurors were found talking about the case outside the courtroom. This is a prohibited action for jurors, as outside sources may influence the verdict.
The Maricopa County attorney’s office offered Moore a plea bargain, but the case never returned to court.
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sentencing
The verdict was a closing argument, but prosecutors and defense counsel were denied at trial because of juror misconduct.
Maricopa County Deputy Attorney Gregory Bizozero said Moore should be held for up to 21 years. He said Moore tried to hide the murder weapon when he left the knife behind the gate of his mother’s house, that the killing was overly violent and painful, and that Moore was not a stranger. claimed to pose a danger to
Moore’s attorney, Greene, told the judge that Moore had no intention of fighting or trying to hurt anyone on the night of the murder. Rather, Morris approached Moore when he was “thinking about himself” in the car and continued to bother him after Moore told him to leave. He also told the court that Mr Moore did not try to hide the knife, and that Mr Moore told police where the knife was as soon as they arrived.
Moore’s mother, the only person not directly involved in the case, spoke at the sentencing.
She told the judge that the weight of what her son had done weighed heavily on her and she was grieving both Morris’ death and the pain it caused her family. She explained to the judge that the murder was induced and that she would get the help her son needed if given the chance.
“Please be lenient with my son. I will do whatever it takes to make this right with my son,” she said.
A judge ultimately sentenced Moore to 13 years in prison, with a 756-day grace period from what he had already served.
He considered this to be Moore’s only issue with the law. He also admitted that Moore didn’t start the fight, but chased Morris and stabbed him too many times.
“If you had retracted that point or hadn’t done anything, we would have played out quite differently in terms of sentencing in terms of guilt,” he told Moore.
