Punk thug convicted of murder despite sudden memory loss by witnesses

A Suffolk Superior Court jury today convicted Lamory Gray of Jamaica Plain of first-degree murder for gunning down a kid who had nothing at all to do with the gang war in which Gray was a soldier, the Suffolk County District Attorney's office reports.

Gray will now be sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole for a murder that sounds sadly similar to yesterday's murder of a 15-year-old in Roxbury.

Prosecutors say Gray pumped Herman Taylor full of bullets on July 29, 2006 because he was happened to be standing on a Roxbury block run by the H-Block Gang, sworn enemies of Gray's Heath Street gang.

Taylor, a student at Belmont High School, "was neither a gang member nor involved in the Heath Street and H-Block rivalry – he simply lived in an area plagued by violence committed by members of those gangs," DA Dan Conley said in a statement.

According to prosecutors, Gray walked up to Taylor, shot him twice and then, as Taylor tried to escape, shot him twice more.

Conley said at least three witnesses "forgot" what they saw when they testified during Gray's trial, but that prosecutors then confronted them with their earlier testimony before a grand jury. "The jurors scrutinized that testimony for more than two full days and refused to be misled. They saw through the lies and intimidation and delivered a just verdict."