Man Who Shot Chauncey Bailey Apologizes In Jailhouse Interview
OAKLAND (CBS / AP) -- The confessed gunman in the shooting of an Oakland journalist and another man said in a jailhouse interview that he is sorry for the pain he caused his victims' families.
"I don't expect them to forgive me," Devaughndre Broussard said Thursday, speaking about the 2007 deaths of Oakland Post editor Chauncey Bailey and another man, Odell Roberson. "But I hope they hear me."
Broussard, 23, spoke from North County Jail in Oakland to the Chauncey Bailey Project, a group of journalists who have written about Bailey's death. Broussard is scheduled to be sentenced Aug. 12 to 25 years in prison after pleading guilty in 2009 to two counts of voluntary manslaughter.
The sentence is part of a deal with prosecutors in exchange for Broussard's testimony against two men convicted this month in Bailey's death, Yusuf Bey IV, the former head of Your Black Muslim Bakery, and Antoine Mackey.
Broussard, a former bakery handyman, testified that Bey ordered him and Mackey to kill Bailey, Roberson and another man, Michael Wills, in exchange for a line of credit.
Jurors also found Mackey, a former bakery supervisor, guilty in the murder of Wills, but deadlocked on a murder charge against him in Roberson's death.
Attorneys for Bey and Mackey questioned Broussard's credibility during the trial, and the prosecutor, Melissa Krum, called him a "sociopath."
Broussard laughed several times while testifying, including while describing Roberson's death.
He said Thursday he found the prosecutor's question funny, not Roberson's death. Krum asked him what happened after he shot Roberson multiple times at close range with an assault rifle.
"I wasn't laughing in the sense the murder was funny," he said. "He fell. What do you think he did?"
Another time, he laughed while describing a yellow Cadillac driven to a December 2007 shooting. Broussard said he thought the car was too conspicuous, like a "beacon in the night."
"I visualized the car and thought it was funny," he said.
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