By Keith L. Alexander
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 4, 2008

Two teenagers quarreled on the evening of Sept. 25, 2006, in a Southeast Washington neighborhood. About what remains a mystery.

This much is known: After the argument, as the younger of the two teens walked away from the dispute, the older teen pulled out a pistol and shot the youth in the back of the head. Then the assailant walked over to the youth lying in a pool of blood and shot him again. This time, in the back.

Yesterday, a D.C. Superior Court judge sentenced Daniel R. Proctor, now 21, of the District, to 23 years in prison in the shooting death of the Capitol Heights youth, Cequawn Brown, an 11th-grader at Eastern Senior High School. Brown died two days before his 17th birthday.

Proctor -- who was 18 at the time of the shooting -- has never told authorities why they argued. One police report said Proctor had accused Brown of stealing items from several back yards in the neighborhood.

Brown's mother, standing just a few feet from Proctor at yesterday's sentencing, repeatedly asked the man charged with her son's death what kind of disagreement was worth the life of her oldest child.

"If you had an argument, wasn't there another way to handle this?" Nika Brown said, turning to Proctor. "Why didn't you come to me if you had a problem with my son? Couldn't there have been a better way to handle this, versus killing my son?"

Proctor, sitting next to his attorney, Heather Pinckney, mostly stared ahead. On occasion, he turned to face Brown's mother.

"Your family can still come and see you," said Brown's grandmother, Maria Newman. "The only way we can see our son is to go to the cemetery."

Assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas A. Gillice acted out a scene to describe to Judge Geoffrey M. Alprin what transpired that early fall evening at the corner of 53rd and Astor streets SE. Gillice mimed the fatal moment when, as Brown walked away, Proctor pulled a gun from his pants, pointed and pulled the trigger. Then, Gillice demonstrated how Proctor walked over to Brown, lying prostrate on the ground, and pulled the trigger again.

Brown's mother, grandmother and sisters, who were in the courtroom, wept and averted their heads.

"He was just a boy," Gillice said of the youth, who stood 5 foot 2 and weighed 140 pounds. "Mr. Brown never had a chance."

Proctor, wearing an orange prison jumpsuit and a skullcap, apologized to Brown's family and to his own family, which was also present.

"I do think about what I did," Proctor said. "This was stupid. It could have been avoided. I just reacted in a non-positive way. I asked Allah to forgive me."

Alprin gave Proctor a little less than the maximum of 24 years agreed to in September when Proctor pleaded guilty to a charge of second-degree murder.

Proctor's attorney argued that her client was a teenager at the time of the offense and lacked coping skills. She said he needed anger-management counseling. Pinckney asked Alprin to impose the minimum sentence of 12 years and, after his release, require her client to speak to teenagers about anger management and the impact of violence.

"This is a tragedy all around," she said. "Yes, he has to serve time. But allow him to come out and contribute to society. Locking up another young black man is not going to help society."

In announcing the longer sentence, Alprin explained: "This is a pretty brutal case. Things happen pretty quickly sometimes, and the people involved know it should not have happened. But acts have consequences."