Local Marine Gets 25 Years-to-Life for Albany Murder

Dec 12, 2006 09:43 PM EST

 
Joseph Jerome
 
 
 
Kevin Murphy
 
An area Marine Corps reservist will spend 25 years-to-life in prison for murder.

26-year-old Kevin Murphy was sentenced in Albany County Court Tuesday morning. He maintains it was self-defense, but he will lose his freedom for stabbing 20-year-old Joseph Jerome of Schenectady last April.

Prosecutors say the men did not know each other when they got into an early morning argument on April 30th that spun out of control. Jerome's family says Murphy has failed to show remorse.

"His pride was hurt," says Amy Hempstead, Joseph's mother-in-law. "He wanted to show how much of a big man he is...well he's a big man alright, 'cause now he's gonna go play with the big boys."

"One, it was an accident," Murphy's attorney, E. Stewart Jones says. "And two, that he was simply defending himself against three individuals because he had one arm...the other was in a cast, and he believed his life was in danger."

Jones says an appeal will be filed, since he was not allowed to present a self-defense argument to the jury.

Army reservist facing murder charge
Updated: 5/1/2006 5:49 PM
By: Capital News 9 Staff

   
  
Albany police have arrested a reserve soldier for the murder of a Schenectady man.

Kevin Murphy, 26, of Albany is charged with second-degree murder in the stabbing death of Joseph Jerome, 20. Police said the two got into an argument early Sunday morning in front of Murphy's apartment house on Hudson Avenue.

Murphy, who is an Army reservist, is accused of stabbing Jerome once in the chest. The weapon has not been recovered.

According to police, the two men didn't know each other, and it is not clear what sparked the argument. The neighborhood is full of students, and some who live there claim the streets can get a little out of hand.

  
  

 
     
  Murder arrest

An Army reservist has been charged with murder after a man was stabbed early Sunday morning in Albany.

  
    
 
 
Resident Mike Trustey said, "It's usually pretty rowdy around here. You know, a lot of people drinking all the time. Not too many families on this block."

Murphy was arraigned and sent to Albany County Jail without bail.

Loved ones remember Joseph Jerome
5/3/2006 2:39 AM
By: Capital News 9 Web Staff

   
  
Loved ones paid their last respects to the victim of a stabbing in Albany over the weekend.

Funeral services were held Wednesday morning for Joseph Jerome, 20, of Schenectady.

Tuesday night, family members returned to the spot where he was murdered in honor of his memory. They also gave thanks to the Albany Police Department for their quick work in the case.
 
 
  WATCH THE VIDEO
  
 
     
  Remembering Joseph Jerome

Loved ones paid their last respects to the victim of a stabbing in Albany over the weekend.

Investigators said Army reservist Kevin Murphy, 26, stabbed Jerome during an argument on Hudson Avenue. According to police, the two men didn't know each other.

Jerome's family is asking for donations for his young daughter. Donations can be made at any local Trustco Bank.

 6:44 pm

 Murphy found guilty of murder
10/17/2006 4:24 PM
By: Web Staff

An Army reservist from Albany has been found guilty of second-degree murder in the death of a Schenectady man.
Kevin Murphy, 25, was on trial for the stabbing death of Joseph Jerome, 20, back in April.
Police said the two got into a fight in front of Murphy's apartment on Hudson Avenue on April 30. Jerome died after he was stabbed in the chest.
Murphy faces 25-years-to-life in prison when he is sentenced on Dec. 12.

He touted his military service and community standing before Albany County Judge Thomas A. Breslin.
"I have served my country and when called upon to fight the war on terrorism and free the people of Iraq, I went," Murphy went on, in an unusually long statement to the court. "Now I'll be forced to live like an animal among animals. I ask you to look at the facts of this case."
Breslin, however, was unmoved, imposing the potential life sentence.
"You come in here and say you are remorseful, that history will look at you as a hero," Breslin said. "The jury screamed just the opposite. You are a murderer."
Earlier this fall, Murphy was convicted of second-degree murder for the street fight on Hudson Avenue that left Jerome, 20, the father of a 3-year-old, dead.
Albany County Assistant District Attorney Mark Harris read the words of Jerome's mother, Janet Morrison, who articulated the pain of losing her only child.
"I can see Joey holding his chest, in excruciating pain, and falling to the filthy sidewalk while Kevin Murphy stood over his body," she wrote. "It is a devastation so destructive it has crippled my emotions."
Outside the courtroom, attorney E. Stewart Jones pledged to appeal Murphy's case because he said his client wasn't allowed to argue self-defense.
Murphy's family traveled from Long Island for the early-morning hearing. His parents sobbed as their son was led away. Murphy's girlfriend, Michele Guglielmi, had a statement prepared.
"If you only knew the person I knew and love, you too would realize he is not a criminal," she said. "Kevin is the type of guy that breaks up fights, not starts them. He is the type of guy his friends look up to, not down upon. This incident was your typical wrong-place-at-the-wrong-time situation."
Amy Hempstead, mother of Jerome's fiance, disagreed.
"He was cocky,"she said. "He's not a hero. My daughter is devastated. His mother is devastated. There's not a day that goes by that we don't think about Joey." 

 
 
ALBANY -- Joseph Jerome was a changed man when he left a prison boot camp.
  
The 20-year-old father had seen trouble before, but during his last time behind bars he said he found solace in God.

had the praying hands of Jesus tattooed on his arm on April 29, the day he left a temporary Scotia home and returned to his family in Albany.

Within 24 hours, he was dead -- fatally stabbed in the heart by a stranger as he displayed the new, elaborate artwork to a young woman he had just met on the street.

Jerome's rosary beads lay in his pocket as his life ebbed away on the sidewalk in front of Kevin Murphy's Hudson Avenue home.

This morning, two families facing tragedy will meet in an Albany County courtroom. Those who loved Jerome will see Murphy, a 26-year-old Marine Corps reservist, sentenced to 25 years to life behind bars.

Murphy's family and girlfriend say they will insist to the end that the wrong man has been convicted.

All Janet Morrison knows is that her only child, Jerome, is gone. The flow of her tears threatens to drown her.

"This sentencing will never ease my pain or bring Joey back," Morrison said. "I have to get used to that fact, and believe he is in heaven."

"He was a city child, and he did get in trouble," she admitted. "But when he came home, he did everything he had promised. He would get a job, his GED."

Now her 3-year-old granddaughter is fatherless, something that just doesn't make sense to her. "He told me, 'Ma, I'll never hang with those kids again,' " Morrison said.

But the lure of the old crowd prevailed. And on his first night back with them, he was killed.

"He loved animals and nature and was a country boy trapped in the city," Morrison said. "He didn't want to stay in Albany because of the violence. I wonder sometimes if he knew his life would be short."

Although her heart is broken, Morrison said she has compassion for the Murphys. "I'm not a hateful person. Whoever thinks that their child is going to murder another? If it was vice versa, I would have been devastated."

The Murphy family is devastated, said Kevin Murphy's sister, Marie Ilardi. Not only for Janet Morrison's loss but for its own.

"Kevin is the middle child in a family of five and as we have grown older, he has become one of my closest friends as well," Ilardi said. "My whole family is reeling from, not only the trial, but the whole incident of last spring."

Defense lawyer E. Stewart Jones said Murphy sealed his fate earlier this fall when he refused to allow the jury to consider a lesser charge of manslaughter. Ilardi said she doubts the judge would have allowed it.

One witness testified that Jerome fell on the knife Murphy was holding during the sidewalk melee that night, Ilardi said. The street was teeming with college students and many were drinking.

Her brother, she said, is not a criminal, but a veteran who served his country. He was also struggling with a broken wrist and had lost his glasses during the fight.
He was defending himself against three people while he was disabled, nearly blind and disoriented from his head hitting the ground," she said. "The only reason he was able to defend himself was, I think, because he was a trained U.S. Marine."
Murphy wishes he could turn back the clock, Ilardi said. "But he still feels, to this day, that he was in fear for his life. He spent the better part of the summer telling me how horrible he felt, especially after finding out that Joseph Jerome was an only child for his mother and had a young child of his own."