Wicked Town defendant gets 32 years for sending friend to his death, acting as ‘the jury, the judge, executioner’

When Deshawn Morgan got it in his head six years ago that a longtime friend had turned on him, giving law enforcement information about Morgan’s drug dealing, by hiring two “killing machines” with guns and money.He sent two members of the violent and vicious Wicked Town street gang to murder his friend, Donald Holmes Jr., in January 2018. Problem was, Morgan was wrong about Holmes. And his plan also led to the brutal death of Holmes’ girlfriend, Diane Taylor, who had nothing to do with it.So Morgan, 42, found himself sitting Thursday in a federal courtroom, where he sought some measure of mercy from a judge because he had since pleaded guilty and testified against Wicked Town’s leader. He helped law enforcement, just as he thought Holmes had done.U.S. District Judge Thomas Durkin wound up giving Morgan a 32-year prison sentence. But the irony wasn’t lost on the victims’ family members, including Holmes’ sister Jacquay Holmes.“You want to be the jury, the judge, executioner, then you come here,” she said to Morgan. “You kill him, and then you come here and you snitch on everybody and do the same thing that you killed him for. It just doesn’t make sense.”Taylor’s aunt, Johnnice Chew, accused Morgan of manipulating two “younger, weaker minds” to “do a job that you could not do yourself.” Taylor’s mother, Dana Chew, said her daughter had “brightened” her days and brought “joy to my life.”She said it “will never, never be the same.”When it was Morgan’s turn to speak, he didn’t face the judge as most criminal defendants do. Rather, he leaned against a podium and spoke toward the courtroom gallery, where the family members were sitting. He held a piece of paper in his right hand, but he said he didn’t want to read the words written on it.Morgan told the family members that, when he goes to sleep in jail every night, . He said his traumatic childhood makes him want “to bring hurt to other people.” But he said he cooperated with prosecutors to change his life.“I made a choice,” Morgan said. “And I’m going to pay for this choice. … I apologize, and I wish you can forgive me.”The dramatic sentencing hearing Thursday stemmed from the feds’ prosecution of the Wicked Town street gang, which Durkin called the “most vicious gang ever prosecuted” in the Dirksen Federal Courthouse. Morgan’s testimony of Wicked Town leader Donald Lee and Torance “Blackie” Benson in 2022.Prosecutors had tied the gang to nearly 40 murders and attempted murders.The feds say Morgan, an associate of the gang, personally murdered one person and ordered the attempted murders of another pair, in addition to Holmes and Taylor.Morgan’s defense attorneys explained that he has an extreme intellectual disability. They described a particularly troubled childhood, which included abuse and abandonment. During his life on the street as a boy, they said, he was always “planning for jail” and thinking negative thoughts like, “how am I going to die?”Relatives of the victims sought a far tougher sentence for Morgan. Prosecutors sought 35 years. But the judge had to acknowledge that, without the help of people like Morgan, “these murders would not have been solved. Most of them wouldn’t have been.”Durkin also struggled in 2022 , one of the two men hired by Morgan, whom Durkin referred to as “killing machines.” Durkin gave Murphy 50 years in prison.He gave the other man, Demond Brown, 30 years.During his 2022 trial testimony, Morgan acknowledged thathe knew he was sending Holmes to his death. Holmes and Taylor were shot in the front of Holmes’2017 Jeep Cherokee outside Murphy’s home in the 4700 block of Arthington Street.Taylor was in the driver’s seat and Holmes was in the passenger seat. Jurors were told that Holmes was shot four times, and that Taylor was shot twice. Murphy was later caught on tape describing how he got into the car and shot the couple.“I get in the back seat,” Murphy said. “Shoot that b-—- in the back of his s---. Pow pow!”Then, Murphy explained, “His b-—- tried to bail out. I grabbed her by the back of her wig. I said, ‘Where you going?’ Pow pow! I hit her in her s--- two times. Then I turn, hit him in his s--- two more times. Pow pow!”Prosecutors say Taylor’s killing was “especially tragic.”“She truly was in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Jimmy Arce wrote in a court memo. “And the court heard Murphy’s retelling of the murder via jail recording — Murphy shot and killed Holmes first, and Taylor attempted to flee from the car, only to have Murphy pull her by the hair and shoot her in the head.”“And what did Morgan do in response to this heinous act?” Arce wrote. “He paid Murphy in guns and in cash.”