Bey cheats death, gets life for murder

Hakeem Bey escaped the death penalty yesterday for the murder of Moses "MoMo" Williams in 2000.

After Bey's attorney Joseph Santaguida urged, "I hope you save a life today," the jury deliberated 90 minutes before sentencing Bey to life without parole. He was convicted Tuesday.

Assistant District Attorney Carlos Vega sought the death penalty.

With a life sentence, he said, Bey will continue to act "strong, powerful and arrogant" with cohorts "from the streets, transplanted into prison."

On other charges, Common Pleas Judge Renee Cardwell Hughes sentenced Bey to 20 to 40 years for two counts of aggravated assault for shooting Brencis Drew and Duane Clinkscales, the latter known as the rapper "Wiz DeNiro," in the same incident.

Bey, whose hands were cuffed to a chain around his waist, stood when Hughes said that she was ordering the sentences to run consecutively because Bey mistakenly thought Clinkscales had snitched and "you retaliated against him."

Bey also received 2 1/2-to-5-year concurrent sentences on two counts each of possession of an instrument of crime and weapons violations.

"I think the sentence was appropriate," Vega said.

"It clearly sends a message that this type of action will not be tolerated in the community."

Williams mother, Gwendolyn Mitchell, said: "I'm glad for the verdict. Now, my son can rest in peace."

Santaguida also said that he was pleased with the sentence but that there were grounds for appeal.

Khadijay Bey blamed her son's guilty verdict on the judge, who would not allow "two signed statements from Chante Wright, who said she was young and coerced by Detective Chuck Boyle" to identify Bey as Williams' killer.

But Santaguida said that there was only one statement from Wright. And Boyle, now retired, said that the statement - given to an investigator for Bey's defense - is worthless because he never took an initial statement from her about Williams' killing.

Wright was killed Jan. 19 before she could testify against Bey, who was linked to her murder in testimony.

Several witnesses made emotional appeals to the nine female jurors, mostly middle-aged women. Cayanna Brown, 26, one of three mothers who testified that they had children, now aged 1, 2 and 6, with Bey, pleaded for mercy because her own father has been on death row since she was 9.

Brown urged the jury to allow her child, who was 5 months old when Bey was jailed, to be able to "hug and kiss him," something she could never do with her father in prison visits because of a glass partition.

Bey's father, Wendell Harrigan, testified, "I wasn't a good dad with my drug addiction. I could have saved my boy."

Outside the courthouse, a juror declined to comment. *