Time stands still for Karen Smith.
“It is still March 26, 2023, 2:30 p.m.!” Smith wrote of the moment her son Jasiah was murdered.
Smith didn’t read her victim impact statement in court Thursday morning, when the two men convicted in his shooting death were each sentenced to 28 years in prison. But she shared it with the Free Press in hopes of representing what Jasiah Smith meant to her in life and the myriad ways in which his death has affected her and her family.
Fredericksburg Circuit Court Judge Gordon F. Willis sentenced Aaron Carter and Lorenzo Brooks to 40 years, with 15 suspended, for second-degree murder, along with three years for the use of a firearm in the commission of a felony.
Carter and Brooks were tried jointly and convicted following a three-day trial in July. Both defendants were teens at the time of the shooting, as was the victim, Smith. The shooting took place on a Sunday afternoon in broad daylight as a group of up to a dozen teens congregated near a basketball court in Bragg Hill.
“I would hope that the community feels a measure of justice from that outcome,” Fredericksburg Commonwealth’s Attorney Elizabeth “Libby” Humphries told the Free Press following the hearing. “As much as nothing can restore Jasiah to the community or change the suffering his family goes through… the court recognized the senseless violence of this situation.”
Smith noted in her victim impact statement that her son, a senior at James Monroe High School at the time of his death, was actively talking to recruiters and had aspirations of one day joining the military.
“I sometimes pretend Jasiah is away serving for his country,” she wrote.
She likewise wrote that she doesn’t cook anymore, because she doesn’t “have a growing man to feed.”
“I realize how much joy I got from watching him eat,” she wrote.
At the beginning of Thursday’s hearing, Willis overruled a motion from Carter’s defense attorney Jim Ilejevich to set aside the jury verdict. Illejevich argued that the jury erred in finding malice, a condition required to return a verdict of second-degree murder.
The maximum sentence for second-degree murder is 40 years; sentencing guidelines called for between 13 and 21 years for each defendant. Humphries asked for an “upward departure” from those guidelines, or somewhere between 25 and 40 years.
Brooks’ defense attorney, Tara-Beth Coleman, said that a social history conducted as part of the pre-sentencing report revealed that her client endured a difficult childhood and didn’t learn the true identity of his father until he was 12 years old. At the time of his incarceration, Brooks was reading at just a sixth-grade level, Coleman said.
Carter submitted four character letters to be considered, and Ilejevich described how his client’s circumstances deteriorated after he lost a basketball scholarship to Richard Bland College and his family could no longer afford tuition.
Neither defendant testified during the trial. But just prior to sentencing, Carter, wearing a beige jumpsuit and knitted cap, told Willis that “Jasiah was a friend of mine,” and that “I send my condolences to the family.”
The judge, however, wasn’t moved.
“The court was struck by your total lack of remorse, of taking responsibility for your actions,” Willis said.
Upon release, Carter and Brooks will be placed on supervised probation indefinitely. Willis also ordered a no-contact order between the defendants and Smith’s family members.
Karen Smith wrote that, had she known she would only get 18 years with her son, it wouldn’t change how she chose to spend them.
“My only regret is not knowing time,” she wrote.
