North Dakota teen sentenced to life in prison after fatally shooting man at motel

A teenager in North Dakota was sentenced on Thursday to life in prison with the possibility of parole after a jury convicted him last year for the September 2022 shooting death of a man at a motel in Bismarck.

State District Court Judge James Hill said he couldn't discount the jury's verdict against Jesse Taylor Jr., who was 16 at the time of the fatal shooting of Maurice Thunder Shield, 28, of McLaughlin, South Dakota. The judge also took issue with Taylor's attorney having characterized him as a child, according to The Bismarck Tribune.

"You were a child who used a 9 mm firearm to put five bullets into another human being," the judge told Taylor. "The court heard the testimony in this case and quite frankly, it was overwhelming. You took the life of an innocent person in a senseless act of extreme brutal violence. Self-defense has been argued to me here, but it was nonexistent. There was no credible testimony that you were threatened, and that is what the jury found beyond a reasonable doubt."

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Taylor declined to speak at his sentencing. He will be eligible to have his sentence reduced after serving 20 years because he was a juvenile when the crime occurred. He will also be eligible to be considered for parole after serving about 55 years.

Taylor's attorney said at trial that the teen acted in self-defense after a verbal altercation with Thunder Shield. The prosecutor said that argument had no legal basis, that Taylor could have escaped from Thunder Shield, and he intended to kill him by firing the handgun five times in several seconds, the newspaper previously reported.

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Taylor also was convicted of aggravated assault for allegedly wounding a motel worker in the shooting, and sentenced to five years in prison for that offense, to be served concurrently.