New Orleans jail escapee who evaded captured for months gets life sentence for double murder

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — The last inmate caught after an audacious New Orleans jailbreak was sentenced Friday to two life sentences over a 2018 double murder, with the Louisiana judge rebuking him for the disruption caused by his five months on the run.

Derrick Groves, 28, wore shackles and an orange jumpsuit in a New Orleans courtroom, two months after investigators tracked him down and captured him beneath a house in Atlanta. Groves and nine other inmates escaped in May by crawling through a hole behind a jail toilet, leaving behind graffiti that read “To Easy LoL.”

A jury last year convicted Groves of two counts of second-degree murder for killing Jamar Robinson and Byron Jackson in a shooting at a Mardi Gras party in 2018. He also pleaded guilty last year to manslaughter in two fatal shootings in a separate case.

Groves’ escape caused “concern, disappointment, frustration and displeasure” to the court, said Orleans Parish Judge Dennis Waldron. The judge said the killings compounded tragedy already endured by Groves’ family, noting that in 1994 a corrupt New Orleans police officer ordered the killing of his grandmother, Kim Groves, after she reported police misconduct.

“He chose to not honor the memory of his grandmother as she lay in that street in the Ninth ward, shot to death,” Waldron said. “He made that conscious decision to go the other way and to kill, not once, not twice, not three times, but four times.”

Kadija Jackson, the sister of one of the victims, said she sends photos of him to his daughter so the girl can show friends she once had a father. Jackson recalled finding her brother dying inside a car after Groves fired an AK-style rifle.

“He lifted his head, but deep down, I knew he wasn’t going to make it,” she said sobbing. “That moment shattered something inside me. Since that day my life has felt like it is missing a a piece that it felt it could never replace.”

As she spoke, Groves smirked and nodded from the defense table, and later turned to stare at her and the other victims’ supporters from across the courtroom.

Peter Freiberg, Groves’ attorney, said his client maintains his innocence and plans to appeal his convictions, while expressing sympathy for the victims’ families.

The judge, however, said Groves showed no remorse and the city would be far safer with him imprisoned for life. In addition to the two life sentences, Groves was convicted of two counts of attempted murder for wounding others in the 2018 shooting. Waldron imposed two 50-year sentences for those convictions, stacked onto the life terms.

The judge also referenced video of Groves smiling and blowing kisses while being led away after his capture in Georgia.

“It is almost as if Mr. Groves thought he were a guest at a presidential motorcade as opposed to a captured fugitive, riding in a police SWAT convoy,” Waldron said. “These actions may be considered a final act of defiance.”

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Brook is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.