Jury spares Bey the death sentence

A Philadelphia jury yesterday spared Hakeem Bey death by lethal injection for the 2000 murder of a neighborhood rival who had ignited a street war by disrespecting Bey's brother.

The 12 jurors deliberated about two hours in Common Pleas Court before deciding that Bey, 26, should spend the rest of his life in prison with no chance of parole.

Bey showed no reaction.

His parents and the mothers of his three children, ages 6, 2 and 1, seemed quietly relieved, though some were also plainly angry.

Defense attorney Joseph Santaguida said Bey planned to appeal the conviction.

Though he had sought the death penalty, Assistant District Attorney Carlos Vega said: "I think the sentence was appropriate, looking at the circumstances of the case. It clearly sends a message to the city of Philadelphia that this type of conduct will not be tolerated in our community."

Vega argued that the evidence showed Bey shot and killed Moses Williams, 23, out of a sense of "ghetto honor."

The prosecution maintained that on Sept. 24, 2000, Bey fired five or six shots into a car stopped in the 2200 block of Cross Street in South Philadelphia. The attack killed Williams and wounded the driver, Brencis Drew.

Afterward, Vega said, Bey tried to eliminate witnesses who might testify against him.

The first was Duane Clinkscales, an aspiring rapper sitting in the back of the death car. The car was one of three transporting friends celebrating Clinkscales' recording contract and first album as "Wiz DeNiro."

Clinkscales was so frightened he began wearing a bulletproof vest. That vest saved his life on Dec. 26, 2000, when, he testified, Bey ambushed and wounded him on a South Philadelphia street.

Vega accused Bey of also engineering the killing this year of Chante Wright, 23. Bey has not been charged in her death.

Wright, another passenger in the car when Williams was killed, was in the federal witness-protection program but returned home shortly before Bey's first trial date to visit her seriously ill grandmother.

Seven hours after she arrived in the city Jan. 19, she and a friend, Octavia Green, 23, were shot to death.

A South Philadelphia man, Laquaille Bryant, 26, has been charged with the murders and awaits trial. At Bey's trial, Vega introduced evidence of cell-phone communications involving Bryant, Bey and a middleman in the minutes before and after Wright and Green were killed.

Jurors, who were taken from the courtroom after the verdict and allowed to leave the building, gave no indication of why they had spared Bey's life.

Under Pennsylvania law, jurors weigh aggravating and mitigating factors involving the defendant and the crime in choosing life or death.

Santaguida argued that Bey's immaturity - he was 18 in 2000 - and other factors in his life in a violence-plagued South Philadelphia neighborhood should rule out the death penalty.

Santaguida asked the jurors to "help me save a life."

Referring to the street violence that has marked Philadelphia, he added: "When does it stop? Shouldn't it stop with us? With sensible, God-fearing people like ourselves?"

Vega urged the death penalty, arguing that Bey had shown no mercy when Williams visited him in 2000 to try to obtain a truce in the neighborhood shooting war.

"Look at him," Vega said, referring to the shackled Bey at the defense table. "Strong, powerful, arrogant. 'I control the world. You don't control me.' "

Judge Renee Cardwell Hughes imposed the sentence immediately and tacked on a 10- to 20-year prison term for the attack on Clinkscales, which she described as "retaliation and intimidation."

In addition to Tuesday's verdict of first-degree murder, the jury found Bey guilty of aggravated assault and weapons charges in the wounding of Drew and Clinkscales.

Relatives of victims and the defendant generally reacted soberly to the verdict.

"It's been eight years. I'm just glad it's over," said Williams' mother, Gwendolyn Williams. "At least now I know my son is resting is peace."

Bey's father, Wendell Harrigan, who testified emotionally about how he had failed his son as a father because of drug addiction, apologized in court and afterward to the Williams family.

"I'm not saying my son committed that crime, but I do want to send them my condolences," Harrigan said.

"We all lost today. No one won," he said. "Moses is not coming back to life, and Hakeem is never coming home again. Young people today don't see what will happen when they participate in taking someone's life."

Bey's mother, Khadijah Bey, said her son had been convicted because the jury "didn't get all the information it needed."

She said she had obtained sworn statements from Wright saying that Bey was not the shooter and that Wright had been coerced into incriminating him by Homicide Detective Charles Boyle.

Vega's partner, Assistant District Attorney Brian M. Zarallo, rejected that statement: "It's the first I heard of it. If it existed, it would have been introduced into evidence."

Boyle, who retired the day before Wright was murdered, also disputed Bey's assertion. He said Wright's statement was not a sworn affidavit but a purported summary of Wright's words compiled by an investigator the Beys had hired.

"It wasn't worth the paper it was printed on, and if it were, you better believe that Joe Santaguida would have used it at trial," Boyle said.

Wright's statements to police, to the city grand jury, and at Bey's preliminary hearing proved crucial to the prosecution's case.

"She tried to help her friend [Williams], and she got killed for it," Boyle said. "Don't talk to me about al-Qaeda. The Beys are basically urban terrorists who almost destroyed a community. I hope this neighborhood gets some peace and quiet tonight."

Hakeem Bey's brother is also serving a life term for murder.