Man convicted in slaying asks court to reduce sentence
A New Jersey-born man convicted of gunning down a Brownsville man last month wants his sentence reduced or vacated completely. Tyrique Patterson, through his defense attorney, William H. Difenderfer, filed a motion to set aside his third-degree murder conviction in the Nov. 29 shooting death of Tony Thomas. Patterson killed Thomas in the South Hill Terrace housing project after the two had a verbal argument earlier in the evening. Patterson was sentenced to 22 1/2 to 45 years in prison for third-degree murder and robbery of a motor vehicle.
Difenderfer’s motion claimed that there was not enough evidence to support the murder verdict because prosecutors did not prove malice, an element necessary to convict someone of murder. Difenderfer also wrote that prosecutors did not show that Patterson did not act with justifiable self-defense as he claimed.
Patterson testified that Thomas and other men with him menaced him and said he fired a single shot to scare them, not to kill Thomas.
Prosecutors argued that Patterson had the option of going back into his home and calling police, but instead stayed to finish the fight.
If Judge Conrad B. Capuzzi, who sentenced Patterson, would not vacate the murder conviction, Difenderfer asked that the jurist bump down the charge to voluntary manslaughter, which would carry a lesser sentence.
Difenderfer also asked Capuzzi to change Patterson’s sentence so that it falls into the standard range, rather than in the aggravated range of sentencing. The motion asked Capuzzi to consider changing the sentence to 11 1/2 to 20 years because there were not aggravating circumstances presented at Patterson’s sentencing hearing.
The motion will go through court this morning.