GUILDERLAND — Tasheem Maeweather, 21, was sentenced in Albany County Court Friday for his role in the firing of a gun last November in Guilderland’s Crossgates Mall. Judge Roger D. McDonough sentenced Maeweather to 3-½ to seven years for reckless endangerment, a felony.  Maeweather’s lawyer plans to appeal.

Maeweather was convicted in May on that sole charge — one of four felonies — stemming from the Nov. 12 incident. Hundreds of shoppers and workers fled the suburban mall on a Saturday afternoon before hundreds of law-enforcement officers descended on it; the entire building was locked down, with many shoppers and employees still inside, for the rest of the day and into the night as police searched unsuccessfully for suspects. No gun was found. No one was hurt. Maeweather was charged two days later. Police could easily track him because Maeweather was on probation for an earlier drug crime and wore an ankle GPS tracker.

After a four-day trial, a jury deliberated for about a day before acquitting Maeweather of attempted murder, attempted assault, and criminal possession of a weapon.

The sentence

Maeweather’s sentence for reckless endangerment will be served consecutively with the nine years he is now serving on probation violations.

McDonough discussed a motion by the defense that asked him to set aside the sole guilty verdict. In his motion Kindlon had argued, the judge said, that the guilty verdict on the reckless-endangerment charge was undermined by the acquittal on the weapons charge.

Kindlon had essentially argued, if Maeweather had not had a gun at the mall, how could he have endangered anyone?

McDonough said that, while there was what he called a “factual insufficiency” — conclusions that would seem to be factually inconsistent — factual insufficiency and legal insufficiency are not the same thing.

Juries are allowed to show mercy, and they are allowed to compromise in order to reach a unanimous verdict on each count, he said.

“Jurors have to agree, and sometimes compromise verdicts are a reality of the system,” the judge said.

Kindlon told The Enterprise that, after McDonough allowed the verdict to stand, the judge had had no leeway in the sentencing. Maeweather’s sentence on this charge was elevated because of the probation violations.

He was on probation because he had been convicted a year earlier of criminal possession of a controlled substance, a felony, and he had been sentenced to five years of probation instead of jail time. The probation violations that he was charged with were using marijuana and leaving Albany County without permission, to go to Schenectady and Troy.

At the probation violation hearing in December, Judge Peter Lynch also considered the four felony charges from the Crossgates Mall incident, in deciding to vacate Maeweather’s earlier sentence and instead impose the maximum possible for both the probation violations and the underlying drug charge.

Reckless endangerment usually carries a sentence of 2-⅓ to 7 years, said Cecilia Walsh, spokeswoman for the Albany County District Attorney’s Office, in May.

Trial recap

Throughout Maeweather’s trial, there was never any question about whether he was present at the shooting. The defense argued that it is not clear which young man — Maeweather or one of several friends with him — fired the gun in the crowded mall that Saturday afternoon, yards away from where Santa was meeting children. The prosecution called numerous witnesses — including the man who played Santa — who were in the mall that day and saw the aftermath, but not the shooting.

The prosecution called just two eyewitnesses: off-duty State Trooper Ian De Giovine, who was at the mall that day with his girlfriend — the other eyewitness — and five-year-old son. De Giovine described the shooting in detail. He said that he had seen Maeweather holding a gun in his right hand and firing it twice; Kindlon argued that Maeweather was left-handed.

Jurors watched a great deal of surveillance footage from the mall in the minutes leading up to and immediately following the shooting, but the only camera in the area where the shooting took place — outside the Apple Store — was a pan-and-zoom, a camera that focuses on one area for a few seconds and then swivels away to cover another location.

They saw Maeweather’s group of friends and another group of young men converge on the same spot in the mall, and they were told by the prosecution that the two groups were from gangs that were hostile to one another.

The footage from the cameras inside the Apple Store showed an encounter between two groups of young men, visible only from about the waist down because of the angles of the cameras, which were affixed high up in the store’s back corners. It showed a scuffle and a punch thrown, at Maeweather, the jury was told, although even this was difficult to make out. A moment later, the jury saw people flinch, as if at a loud noise, and then get down on the ground or start to run.

It was not clear, on any video footage, who drew or fired the gun, the defense argued.

The jury agreed, acquitting Maeweather on the three top charges.

No gun was ever found, although a metal object an expert called “consistent with a bullet” was found when a damaged piece of drywall was cut away from a wall beneath an escalator.

There were no known injuries.

Kindlon said outside the courtroom, during the trial, that Maeweather had been there. “So were eight other people. Any one of them could have shot that gun.”

Appeal ahead

After the sentencing, Kindlon said he plans to take the case to the Appellate Court. “In our legal research, we couldn’t find any case like Tasheem’s,” he said, “where there was a reckless endangerment conviction that was allowed to stand and a gun charge was acquitted.”

Another avenue is to ask Lynch to reconsider his nine-year, maximum sentence.

University At Albany School of Criminal Justice Distinguished Professor James Acker told The Enterprise at the time of Lynch’s decision during the December probation hearing, that Lynch was within his discretion to use the Crossgates charges as part of his consideration, even though Maeweather had not yet been to trial or had a chance to fight the charges.

Acker said then that, if Maeweather were to be acquitted of the Crossgates charges, a motion for reconsideration could be made to Lynch, or “at a minimum,” an Appeals Court might ask Lynch to reexamine his finding. But even then, Lynch said, it would still be possible legally for the judge to stand by his decision. Lynch would not need to be convinced of Maeweather’s guilt on the Crossgates charges “beyond a reasonable doubt,” as in a trial, but only “by a preponderance of the evidence.”

In other words, if Lynch thinks that Maeweather is probably guilty, that could be enough to allow the original nine-year sentence to stand.

In a worst-case scenario, Kindlon said outside McDonough’s courtroom Friday, Maeweather might do 10 or 11 years total, since he would become eligible for parole after six years on the nine-year charge, and then serve perhaps two or two-and-a-half of the new sentence.

But, Kindlon said, “It is my sincere hope that Judge Lynch reevaluates his maximum sentence, now that he’s been acquitted of three of the four charges.”