EDMONTON – An Edmonton man who was just shy of his 18th birthday when he helped lure a man into a fatal robbery was sentenced Thursday to 11 years in prison for manslaughter.
Clinton Mahoney, now 20, also lost a court application to have his name remained banned from publication. Mahoney’s name was banned by law until provincial court Judge Janet Franklin decided he would be sentenced as an adult. He was 11 days from turning 18.
On Sept. 4, 2010, Mahoney and others lured drug dealer Jesse James to a south Edmonton parking lot and planned to steal money and drugs from him, court heard. James, 23, was fatally shot while sitting in the driver’s seat of his car. Mahoney restrained James from the back seat while a co-accused shot him. James died almost instantly. Mahoney and the shooter later became roommates.
“This offence was planned, deliberate and for personal gain,” Franklin said. “Mr. Mahoney’s role was central and necessary to the commission of the offence.”
Though Mahoney did not pull the trigger, the judge noted, he did organize the plan. He was the one who lured James with a phone call.
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Since his arrest three months after the crime, Mahoney has been “defiant, violent, rude and confrontational” in custody, Franklin said. Mahoney, who has a young daughter, has shown little interest in accepting responsibility for James’s death and no sign he can be rehabilitated.
An apology that Mahoney read to court was “in the barest of terms,” the judge said.
“I feel sorry, but I’m past that stage,” Mahoney wrote. “I can’t cry anymore. I have to move on. I’m really not a dangerous person.”
As the James family cried in the gallery, Mahoney sneered at the court as he reclined in the prisoner’s box.
Court heard that Mahoney spent his “violent and disturbed” childhood in Ontario, where he was suspended from school 50 times and was frequently violent. As a teen, he moved to Edmonton to live with his older brother and became involved in the drug trade, court heard.
He was living with his girlfriend’s family at the time of his arrest for James’s death.
Outside court, James’s father Derrick James said the years of sitting in court appearance for Mahoney and his three accomplices have been difficult. He and his family are glad it’s done.
“There’s a little closure, but we still cry every day,” he said. “Jesse’s room, his stuff, is all still just how he left it. It will be time to pack that up soon.”
Earlier in the proceedings, James’s older sister Tanya lamented that he wouldn’t get to know his niece, born shortly after his death. Her final weeks of pregnancy were marked by weight loss and grief as she prepared a eulogy for her brother, she said.
“My little girl’s birth is scarred forever by my little brother’s untimely death,” she said. “My mother’s tears and constant sadness make my heart ache.”
Christopher Macoon-Evans, 22, who shot James, pleaded guilty to manslaughter and was sentenced to nine years in prison.
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