Tri-State man sentenced in 2020 fatal Hagerstown shooting; maintains his innocence

A Tri-State area man who continues to maintain his innocence will have to serve at least 30 years of his sentence before he can be eligible for parole for the November 2020 shooting death of Hagerstown resident Jason Tyrone Christie.

Washington County Circuit Court Judge Mark K. Boyer sentenced James Edward Williams, 41, on Wednesday to life in prison, suspending all but 40 years, for the first-degree murder conviction by a jury in December. Boyer sentenced Williams to a consecutive 20 years for being convicted by the jury of using a firearm in the commission of a crime of violence. Several of the other charges Williams was convicted of were merged for sentencing purposes.

For both of those crimes of violence, Williams must serve at least half of the active portion of his sentences.

Boyer told Williams that he fashioned the sentence in a way that does not "foreclose" the possibility that Williams could be paroled at some point. If and when that happens, Williams would be on supervised probation for five years.

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Williams has credit for three years and almost four months of time already served on this case.

In sentencing Williams, Boyer also said his overriding concern is public safety.

After the jury was deadlocked and a mistrial was declared in Williams' first trial in January 2023, a second jury found him guilty in December for the Nov. 1, 2020, shooting death of Christie in a neighborhood near Fairgrounds Park.

A city resident found Christie in an alley off the 300 block of North Mulberry Street that Sunday afternoon.

Christie, 27, later died at Meritus Medical Center east of Hagerstown.

Assistant State's Attorney Beverly Plutnick recommended Wednesday that Williams receive a life sentence on the murder conviction and a consecutive sentence on the gun-related convictions.

Plutnick said Williams "still does not take responsibility for what he did that day."

She read a letter from Christie's mother, who wrote she prayed and hoped for justice and that Williams would receive life imprisonment.

Plutnick mentioned Christie saying, while lying in the alley dying, that, "I sold him weed and he killed me."

Regardless of what people may think of Christie from that statement, Plutnick said Christie had a job, a child and a girlfriend.

"He did not deserve to be shot down," Plutnick said.

Referring to Williams' criminal record in New York, Assistant Public Defender Robert Kline said Williams made an "offhand comment" about having to take care of his family after his father, an alcoholic, died.

Williams has had economic, societal and family struggles over his life, including being impoverished, Kline said. He said his client also has been diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder.

Kline asked Boyer to suspend any sentence for the gun charges.

Convicted for murder, Williams maintains his innocence

Williams addressed the judge at length before receiving his sentence.

"I had a beautiful family and I wasn't trying to mess that up .... I'm not a killer," Williams said.

Williams told Boyer he was throwing himself at the mercy of the court and hoped his past criminal record would not be held against him.

He admitted to "selling drugs back in the day" and said he stopped dealing when he got custody of his daughter.

Williams said he never had what he would consider a drug problem. He did drink, like his father, and "smoked," but never did hard drugs, which he said could have led to robberies and purse snatchings.

He said he had no role models to look up to when he was younger. Two uncles were sentenced to life and died in prison.

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Williams' mother, who earlier provided a statement via speaker phone in the courtroom, said Williams' father died in 2006.

She told Boyer her son is "not the type of person who would hurt someone" and asked the court for compassion.

"Please don't throw my son away," she said.

Speaking of how he'd changed his life, Williams said he had been taking care of his responsibilities. "It might have been a little late, but I was doing it."

While Williams said he didn't want to go back through the litigation of his case, "nothing stuck out showing my true guilt. Most people in my situation, they run."

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Highlights from Williams' trials

Key during both trials was identification issues, with the state arguing it was Williams' car that left the shooting scene, and that Williams was "Ice" from Brooklyn, N.Y. Christie made dying declarations to the responding resident in the neighborhood, as well as to police, that Ice was the man who shot him. And that Ice was from Brooklyn.

Plutnick had said Snapchat messages on a phone owned by Christie and a number tied to Williams showed a meeting being set up that Sunday.

The responding neighbor described an Infiniti leaving the scene, Plutnick said. Police used city surveillance footage to track at least some of the car's movements. An officer later found a car matching the vehicle description parked along Knightsbridge Drive.

A Ring doorbell camera showed the defendant exiting the car and walking toward Brinker Drive, Plutnick said.

When Williams was charged in November 2020, the address on his charging documents was near Martinsburg, W.Va. Plutnick said the temporary tag to a vehicle matching the description of the suspect's car came back registered to Williams with a Brinker Drive address in Hagerstown.

Knightsbridge and Brinker are both south of East Wilson Boulevard and west of Frederick Street in Hagerstown's South End.

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Police set up surveillance on the car and when Williams arrived at the car, police took him into custody.

Police executed a search and seizure warrant on the home and found a .22-caliber firearm and a .40-caliber firearm. Christie was shot with a .22, Plutnick said.

Both the state and defense stipulated that Williams, due to a previous conviction, was prohibited from possessing a regulated firearm.

Plutnick argued in her December closing that Williams showed up at a marijuana buy with a loaded gun.

Prosecutors don't know what was argued about, but "something happened during that meetup in the alley," Plutnick told the jury.

During the jury deliberations in the first trial, in January 2023, that jury asked to again see the video of the Infiniti the suspect was believed to be traveling in after the shooting. The jury periodically asked that the video be stopped at various points, including where the driver would be most visible through the windshield.

But that jury deadlocked, resulting in the state trying the case again this past December.

The state had some additional evidence at the second trial, including a comment made on a Hagerstown Police Facebook post of a news release about the arrest. The commenter, responding to someone else, wrote, "LOL" and "That's Ice," Plutnick has said. Police confirmed the Facebook commenter's account and post.

And when Williams was booked, he answered Brooklyn, N.Y., regarding his place of birth, Plutnick has said.

But Kline, in his closing, said that man said he didn't write that comment and that his girlfriend was accessing his Facebook account at the time.

Kline, who did not represent Williams in the first trial, pointed out numerous issues in the state's case where he thought there was reasonable doubt. That included that no one had identified the person in the car. The fact that someone owns the car doesn't mean that is the only person who drives the car, he said.

This article originally appeared on The Herald-Mail: Washington County judge issues sentencing in 2020 Hagerstown murder