One of two gang members who killed a woman and hurt eight others by shooting at a house in Colerain Township in 2017 was found guilty and given a life term by the Ohio Supreme Court.

The unanimous decision came out on Friday.

This July 8, 2017, mass killing happened at a house where a gender-reveal party was being held. James Echols, 29, was found guilty of nearly twenty counts, including aggravated murder, in Hamilton County Common Pleas Court.

Echols was given a life term in prison in 2022, but he could get out after 41 years. His request for a new trial was based on the idea that the judge had wrongly allowed evidence that Echols tried to scare witnesses who could speak against him.

While Echols was in jail in Hamilton County before his trial, he wrote a letter to a friend in Columbus. In it, he named two possible witnesses and said that one of them “has to go ASAP.” The letter said that if that person was taken out, the second witness would change his story.

According to the evidence, both Echols and the second shooter, Michael Sanon, were from Columbus and were part of the Crips gang. They were paid to shoot the person.

On the last page of Echols’ letter, he wrote down the full names, birth dates, and Social Security numbers of the shooting victims who were still alive. “See what you can do with this info,” it told the guy in Columbus.

Jailhouse graffiti, gun gesture

The judge agreed that the letter could be used against the defendant in court. The judge also let the prosecutors use other proof of witness harassment, such as testimony that Echols made a “gun gesture” toward a witness and graffiti on a jailhouse wall calling the witness “a rat” and saying there was a $30,000 reward to kill him.

But Echols’ lawyers said that letting the evidence of witness harassment in broke state law. In the end, the Supreme Court said it could be used because it was important and wouldn’t unfairly hurt the case.

It’s possible that the proof was biased, but it wasn’t unfair, the opinion says. “We conclude that the trial court did not abuse its discretion in admitting this evidence.”

As part of the investigation into the shooting, it was found that the woman who threw the party for the supposed gender reveal wasn’t pregnant. Autum Garrett, her cousin, was killed, and eight other people, including three children, were hurt.

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