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SALT LAKE CITY — Despite promises that he is no longer the troubled, drug-addicted teenager he was when he shot and killed his stepfather, a judge sentenced Rosco Dewayne Brackett Friday to a term of six years to life in prison.
"I believe I have come a long way in the past 35 months. I am no longer a confused kid, I am an adult now," Brackett, now 19, told the judge, asking for a chance to prove himself through one more year in a jail, completion of a number of programs and a structured probation.
Brackett no longer looks like his 16-year-old mugshot, which shows him with his chin raised and shaggy bleached hair swept to the side. As he stood shackled in court, still tall and lanky but with his hair dark and short, he turned to where his mother was sitting and raised his eyebrows in a quiet greeting.
"I have no doubt you were a different person and that, sober, you wouldn't do now what you did then," 3rd District Judge Katie Bernards-Goodman told Brackett.
But without further preamble, the judge imposed the maximum sentence available Friday: consecutive terms of one to 15 years in prison for manslaughter, a second-degree felony, and five years to life for discharge of a firearm, a first-degree felony.
Brackett was originally charged as an adult with murder in his stepfather's death. He pleaded guilty in January to the reduced charges.
Just days before his 17th birthday, Brackett shot and killed his stepfather, James Michael George, as the two were arguing in their West Valley home on Sept. 14, 2012. Brackett had dropped out of school and was doing drugs, leading to frequent fights with his stepfather.
Prosecutor Blake Hills on Friday said George, 52, had given Brackett an ultimatum either to go back to school or get a job. Brackett's actions, he contended, were not fueled by drugs but by calculated rage.
"This is one of the most chilling accounts I have read or seen," Hills said, describing Brackett's statement of standing over George's body after he shot him and continuing to fire at his head. George died two days later in the hospital.
Brackett's mother, Gina George, testified in 2013 that the family's relationships had reached a breaking point, calling her husband controlling and accusing him of forcing her to quit her job and withholding her pain medication. Instead, she said she turned to drugs.
Gina George claimed she was in a bathroom and had headphones on when her husband was shot, coming out later to find him bleeding on the floor.
James George's son, sister and niece, however, recalled George as a loving and gentle man dedicated to caring for his family. They called for justice, asking the judge to hand down a prison sentence.
"He took another life of a human being," Jim George told the judge, recalling seeing his father lying in a hospital bed and knowing he would never speak to him again.
Brackett apologized to his stepfather's family, who he said were his family as well for several years.
"There are not enough years in my life to give back what I have done to this family," Brackett said. "I reacted poorly in an argument that cost Jim his life."
In a letter submitted to the court last month, George pleaded on her son's behalf, saying she has seen a number of positive changes in him during his incarceration. Brackett has earned his GED, completed a life skills program, and held a number of jobs in the jail that he took pride in. Through their visits, Brackett tried to share the things he was learning with her and urged her to apply them in her own life.
"He is constantly looking forward and trying to prepare everything for a future, a good future, working hard and having a family and a productive future," Gina George wrote. "I do know he has to be punished for what he did. I just hope and pray you can give him a chance to become someone instead of someone who comes in and out of the system because that's all they know."
George ended her letter with the promise that her son will become "someone to look up to."
