Community Corner

Newark Cop Killer Sentenced to 39 Years

Detective Michael Morgan, a Belleville native, was considered a 'rising star' within Newark Police Department.

The man who shot and killed off-duty Newark police Detective Michael Morgan outside a Paterson strip club two years ago was sentenced Tuesday to 39 years in prison.

Jerome Wright, 25, a member of the Bloods street gang, pleaded guilty several weeks ago to aggravated manslaughter and armed robbery in connection with Morgan’s death. The sentencing in Paterson follows a plea agreement Wright previously reached with Passaic County prosecutors that spared him a possible life sentence.

Wright must serve 34 years before becoming eligible for parole.

Shackled and clad in a green prison jumpsuit, Wright declined to speak before sentencing, but his public defender, Jon Iannaccone, said Wright “does not wish me to offer any excuses....Mr. Wright does accept responsibility for what he did here.” 

Through Iannacone, Wright also asked Judge Donald Volkert to impose a sentence of less than 39 years.  

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But Assistant Prosecutor Michael DeMarco, in pushing for the maximum possible under the plea agreement, described Wright as a career criminal who has never had a job and whose first significant brush with the law was a weapons offense when he was just 8 years old. Wright, who has been arrested more than a dozen times as an adult, also repeatedly used aliases in an attempt to evade prosecution.

“I find a risk the defendant will commit another offense. In your case, Mr. Wright, it is a certainty,” Volkert said.

Also sentenced Wednesday in Passaic County Superior Court was Wright’s girlfriend, Nashali Gadson, 20, of Newark, who was waiting in the car as Wright confronted Morgan. She was sentenced to 10 years in prison for armed robbery and must serve at least 8-and-a-half years before earning parole eligibility.

“I send my deepest apologies to all the victims. I never meant to cause them any pain or grief,” Gadson, who has a baby with Wright,  said before she was sentenced.

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“I apologize. I truly regret my actions,” she added.

Volkert counted the time both have already served in jail towards their sentence. The couple was captured at a Philadelphia-area motel just days after the shooting.

Morgan was escorting a woman to her car outside the Sunrise Lounge around 3 am Nov. 7, 2011, when Wright approached and demanded cash at gunpoint. When Morgan attempted to draw his own weapon, Wright fired a fatal shot into his chest.

Morgan, a 32-year-old Belleville native, was described as a “rising star” within the Newark Police Department, where he had served for nearly seven years, most recently with the gang unit. He was posthumously awarded the department’s Medal of Honor.

Prior to sentencing, dozens of Newark police and Morgan family members and friends looked on as DeMarco screened a video montage of photos from Morgan’s life and career with the Newark Police Department. Afterwards, Morgan’s mother Phyllis and sister Nicole told the court about the son and brother who brought compassion to his work as a gang-squad detective in one of the nation’s most dangerous cities.

Speaking more in sorrow than in anger, Phyllis Morgan said she blamed Wright’s and Gadson’s parents for failing to offer them proper guidance when they were growing up.

“I just have to ask: was it really worth 34 years of your life?” Phyllis Morgan asked Wright.

She also said that her son, who helped support her and his siblings financially following the death of Morgan’s  father in 2009, was just as generous when he put on his badge and hit the streets. Morgan regularly fed a homeless man who occupied the same corner every day and called Morgan “Starsky,” after the character from 1970s television police drama “Starsky and Hutch.” He befriended a young boy who told Morgan that he did not like police officers. One of Wright’s fellow gang members even expressed his condolences upon learning of Morgan’s death.  

By killing him, Phyllis Morgan said, Wright had not just taken something precious from her but from the community Morgan served.

“Mike always wanted to be a cop and he loved the job. He loved Newark,” Phyllis Morgan said.

“As far as the defendants here today, Mike would have helped them.”
Morgan’s family is creating a foundation in his name benefiting inner-city youth, Phyllis Morgan also said.


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