SEATTLE _ Nearly 4{ years after six masked males stormed a Seattle homeless encampment to rob a drug dealer, two brothers who were found guilty of fatally shooting two people and critically injuring three others were each sentenced Thursday to 40 years in prison.
James and Jerome Taafulisia were 17 and 16 years old on the night of the Jan. 26, 2016, shooting spree at "the Caves," a former homeless encampment within the sprawling, 150-acre Jungle that was shut down by the city nine months later.
Now 22 and 20, the brothers were charged as adults and stood trial three times: Their first two trials, held at the Maleng Regional Justice Center in Kent, ended in mistrials, in August 2018 and March 2019. After the judge who presided over those trials retired, the brothers' case was returned to Seattle, where a jury heard four weeks of testimony and deliberated for 1{ days before finding the brothers guilty of all charges on Dec. 12.
Evidence at trial showed James Taafulisia was armed with a .45-caliber handgun and Jerome Taafulisia was armed with his mother's .22-caliber handgun. Their younger brother, who was 13 at the time, was considered a full participant in the robbery but didn't shoot anyone. He was found guilty of murder and assault charges in juvenile court in May 2018. Now 18, the youngest brother will remain in custody until his 20th birthday and then will spend six months on parole as he transitions back into the community, according to disposition records in his case.
Three other males participated in the robbery but there wasn't enough evidence for them to be charged, prosecutors have said.
James and Jerome Taafulisia will spend the first years of their sentences in the custody of the state Department of Children, Youth and Families, likely at Green Hill School in Chehalis, a medium/maximum security facility for male youthful offenders between the ages of 16 and 25, court records show. They would later be transferred into the custody of the state Department of Corrections to serve the remainder of their sentences.
Had James and Jerome Taafulisia been adults at the time of the shootings, they would have faced standard sentencing ranges of roughly 90 to 113 years in prison, court records show. But their young ages and their troubled childhoods _ which included chronic homelessness, parental neglect, early exposure to drugs and violent crime, and numerous other traumas _ are mitigating circumstances that warrant an exceptional sentence below the standard range, the state and defense agreed in pre-sentencing memos submitted to King County Superior Court Judge Sean O'Donnell.
O'Donnell presided over the brothers' third trial and sentenced them on Thursday.
Defense attorneys representing the brothers recommended far shorter prison terms than did prosecutors: Dan Norman, who represented James Taafulisia, recommended 17-year sentences, while Yvonne Curtis, Jerome Taafulisia's defense attorney, recommended the brothers each serve 20 years, according to court records.
Senior Deputy Prosecutors Mary Barbosa and Stephen Herschkowitz recommended that the brothers each be sentenced to 47 years, arguing the defense sentence recommendations were far too lenient given the violence inflicted on the five victims, their families and the Seattle community, according to their pre-sentencing memo.
"James and Jerome were raised to believe that committing robbery was an acceptable or necessary way to survive," Barbosa wrote in the memo. "Their extremely unstable living situation that permeated their childhood provided no sense of right or wrong and instead taught them to value violence and crime."
The shooting occurred a little after 7 p.m. on Jan. 26, 2016, when six masked males on bicycles arrived at the Caves below Interstate 5.
The group was in and out of the encampment in two minutes.
Their target was prolific drug dealer, Phat Nguyen, who was seated with several other people around a fire pit, and who was shot in the chest with a .45 caliber handgun.
The man sitting next to him, 33-year-old James Tran, was shot twice with the .45 and died on the way to Harborview Medical Center. Also killed was 45-year-old Jeanine Brooks, also known as Jeanine Zapata, who was found dead in a tent, shot once with the. 45 and once with the .22.
Two other women, Tracy Bauer and Amy Jo Shinault, were shot in the back.
Nguyen, Bauer and Shinault all survived.
The youngest Taafulisia brother grabbed Nguyen's bag and jacket as the group fled the scene.
Prosecutors' evidence against the Taafulisia brothers included a 90-minute video secretly recorded by two police informants depicting the brothers discussing the shootings.
During trial, jurors heard the Taafulisias didn't get the haul they anticipated, leaving the camp with only $100 worth of black-tar heroin and $200 or $300 in cash. The brothers, who had been homeless for years, gave their mother $100 and spent the rest on food, according to testimony.
A Seattle Police Department SWAT team arrested the brothers at a nearby homeless encampment on Feb. 1, 2016.
Police would later match casings from the scene to a .45-caliber handgun purchased from the brothers by a police informant and a .22-caliber handgun police later found in the brothers' tent. The informant paid $500 for the .45-caliber handgun and when the brothers were arrested six days after the shootings, the youngest brother had two $100 bills that had been marked by police with him.
The state's pre-sentencing memo references a trio of U.S. Supreme Court rulings, handed down between 2005 and 2012, that were based on neuroscience that's proven adolescent brains aren't fully developed until age 25 _ and as a result, juveniles are considered less culpable than adults for criminal behavior. Science also has shown that adolescents possess a greater propensity for change and rehabilitation compared to adults.
In 2017, a state Supreme Court ruling gave trial judges unfettered discretion in sentencing defendants who were juveniles at the time a crime was committed and then were convicted in adult, or superior, court. Judges now must consider a defendant's age when a crime was committed as a mitigating circumstance and have the discretion to depart from standard sentencing ranges.
The state Legislature also enacted a provision ensuring that most juveniles who commit serious violent crimes will be released after serving 20 years, regardless of the length of their initial sentence, Barbosa wrote in the state's memo.
There is a presumption that a juvenile offender will be released after 20 years unless the state's Indeterminate Sentence Review Board determines the offender is likely to commit more crimes if released, the memo says.
Five years before an offender's release date, DOC is required to offer a variety of treatment programs to aid reentry into the community. If a juvenile offender is released after 20 years, DOC can impose community supervision, the state's version of parole, up to the length of the court-imposed sentence _ and if offenders violate their release conditions, they can be returned to prison to serve the remainder of their sentences.
Neither of the Taafulisia brothers has expressed remorse for their crimes and both have "significant treatment needs in the areas of aggression, trauma, anxiety, mental health, developmental delays and impulse control," Barbosa wrote in the memo, which says James and Jerome Taafulisia have each committed more than a dozen infractions since being jailed.
Their infractions have included assaults, mutual fights and making threats, the memo says.
"A 47-year sentence will provide James and Jerome with a significant incentive to do the work that needs to be done before they are able to safely re-integrate with society," Barbosa wrote. "It also provides a safety net to protect the community should they fail to avail themselves of these services."
