Man in prison for life receives 40-year term

Photo

James A. Hall

The two-time killer was ‘a one-man crime wave,’ the prosecutor said.

STAFF REPORT

CLEVELAND — A Youngstown man sent to prison for life for killing a drug informant has received a 40-year federal prison sentence on crack cocaine trafficking charges to be served consecutively to the life sentence.

U.S. District Judge Christopher A. Boyko imposed the sentence Thursday on James A. Hall, 30, of Victoria Street, who had earlier pleaded guilty to four counts of trafficking in crack cocaine and one count of possessing that drug with intent to distribute it.

In imposing a maximum sentence and making it consecutive to the life term, Judge Boyko followed the recommendation of Assistant U.S. Atty. Joseph M. Pinjuh, who said Hall showed no remorse and called him “a one-man crime wave” and “a major threat to the safety of the citizens of Youngstown.”

Calling Hall “a genuine menace to society,” Judge R. Scott Krichbaum of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court sentenced Hall in May to life in prison without parole after a jury convicted Hall of the murder of Jeffrey A. Queen, 35, of Austintown.

Queen was a confidential informant, who made undercover drug buys from Hall for police and was to testify against Hall in the federal case. Queen was shot three times in the torso with a .38-caliber gun at 12:30 a.m. on Oct. 14, 2006. A witness discovered Queen’s body in the woods in the 4000 block of Riblett Road eight hours later.

Queen wasn’t the first person Hall killed.

Hall was sentenced to five to 25 years in prison after he pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and felonious assault in a May 1995 shooting that killed Arthur Tarver and critically wounded Larry J. Hargrave. Hall and both victims were then 17.

Tarver died from bullet wounds to his neck and chest. Hargrave survived 13 gunshot wounds.