"This kid is a vicious killer and he knows the system."
That's what Baltimore Circuit Court Judge Wanda Heard had scribbled as she listened to the case against Dane Shives Jr., a member of the Dead Man Inc. gang charged with a double shooting in 2010 that left one man dead.
This week, Shives, 25, appeared before Heard for sentencing after being found guilty in the shooting, and the judge expressed skepticism about his remorse. She told him about the notation she had written down earlier in the case.
"You're either an ace manipulator and doing what you need to do to get on my side, or a genuinely higher power has touched you," she said. "I don't know which is true."
The sentence: Life, with all but 40 years suspended.
Heard said there was no question that the sentence was intended as a punishment. "I do not believe we have rehabilitation behind bars. I wish we did -- but we do not," she told.
The shooting occurred in August 2010 in Brooklyn near Garrett Park. Andre Graham, 27, was killed after Shives fired seven bullets into a vehicle. A second man was wounded and survived. Shives was quickly arrested that weekend. No motive was disclosed at the sentencing.
A year later, Shives was one of 22 alleged Dead Man Inc. members and associates indicted in U.S. District Court on racketeering conspiracy and related charges. In 2013, Shives was sentenced to 15 years in federal prison for that case.
Shives' attorney, James Scott, said his client had grown up around violence and drug abuse, and was committed to the Department of Juvenile Services at age 12. At age 17, he was brought into the Dead Man Inc. prison gang, which offered him a semblance of family, Scott said.
Scott said Shives had accepted responsibility for his actions and was participating in various programs behind bars. "This is an individual who has expressed as much control as he can over the variables he controls," Scott told Heard.
"You are talking about someone who has taken a life," Heard responded.
Shives read a letter to the victim's family and his own family, expressing remorse and saying that he had found God.
"Deep, deep down, I'm a good person with a good heart," Shives said, as a relative of Graham sobbed. "We are all children of God."
The case was prosecuted by Assistant State's Attorney Tonya LaPolla.