Darryl Clemons was convicted of abducting and murdering a Chicago firefighter, but he wasn’t the one who pulled the trigger. That fact probably spared his life Friday when a Cook County Circuit judge sentenced the West Side man to 60 years for his role in the crime.
The same judge, Shelvin Singer, in June sentenced Clemons’ partner, the trigger man, to death for the 1991 killing of Marvin Cheeks, 36, a Navy veteran whose brother Maurice played in the National Basketball Association.
Cheeks was accosted by Clemons, 23, and James Munson, 22, when he stopped to make a phone call from a pay phone on the South Side. At gunpoint, the two forced Cheeks to drive them to the West Side.
During the drive, Cheeks told the assailants about his life and pleaded with them not to kill him. They took his leather jacket, his wallet and jewelry and then, still inside the car, Munson shot him, prosecutors said.
Cheeks jumped out and ran, but fell. Munson then stood over him and shot him again three times, prosecutors said. The two assailants burned the car to hide evidence.
At Munson’s sentencing, Singer said: “The motive for this killing, I am convinced, was to protect the defendants from prosecution. This was a cold-blooded, planned killing that was conceived and executed in a cool, calm manner.”
But another brother of Cheeks, Mark, and Assistant State’s Atty. Diane Gordon Cannon said Singer’s sentence for Clemons didn’t fit the crime.
“Sixty years-that’s a joke,” said Cheeks, who had hoped for the death penalty or a life sentence. “That’s ridiculous. He shouldn’t have been allowed to walk the streets again.”
“He deserved death,” Cannon said. “If not, the least would be natural life without parole for the protection of society.”
