A Washington, D.C., man convicted of murder in 1995 and freed early under a controversial criminal justice reform law was found guilty this week of a second murder he committed six months after his 2020 release.
A jury on Tuesday convicted Darrell Moore, who was released after serving 25 years for the 1995 murder, of the premeditated first-degree murder of Julius Hayes in April 2021, according to the Washington Post.
The law that facilitated Moore’s release has faced criticism since the D.C. Council passed it in 2016. The Incarceration Reduction Amendment Act (IRAA) allows for the early release of felons—even those convicted of murder, rape, and child sex abuse—who were under 25 years old when they committed the crime, have already served 15 years, and have had only minor infractions while incarcerated.
Those who qualify are among “the absolute most violent and dangerous offenders,” then-U.S. attorney Jessie Liu said in 2019, when the city expanded the program to cover felons under the age of 25. So far, 368 of the nearly 600 eligible felons have been released early under the law, and 11 have already been convicted of new crimes, according to the Post.
As a teenager, Moore was sentenced to 66 years to life in prison after he and a group of robbers broke into an apartment, killed a teenage girl who was kneeling to pray, and wounded two others. Obama-appointed Superior Court judge Robert Okun granted Moore’s early release in 2020 under the IRAA. Moore shot and killed Hayes six months later.
This is not the first time Okun has released an offender early who went on to face murder charges. Michael Garrett was sentenced in 1999 to at least 24 years for multiple robbery and assault charges related to his decades-long stalking of Sylvia Matthews. Despite opposition from the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Okun granted Garrett “compassionate release” in 2021, as COVID-19 spread through his prison. Police arrested Garrett later that year for murdering Matthews—more than two decades after a jury convicted Garrett of assaulting her.
