Black man killed in Sacramento-area hate crime. Defendant gets maximum sentence
Latrina Davis spoke on Friday directly to the man convicted of killing her brother, a Black man, who was gunned down last year in a Sacramento County hate crime simply because of his race.
“You couldn’t see past the color of his beautiful Black skin,” Davis said in court. “I think about his last breath every single day. I imagine him fighting for his life after watching the video of him standing up after being shot, trying to survive, only to fall again alone on the cold ground.”
James Roseman, 38, of Sacramento was killed in a June 9 drive-by shooting at an Arden Arcade shopping center. A jury in February found Joseph Paul DeMarco, 48, guilty of murder in Roseman’s death.
The murder conviction for DeMarco, a white man, included a special circumstance enhancement for intentionally killing Roseman because of his race, according to the Sacramento County District Attorney’s Office.
DeMarco and Roseman didn’t know each other, and they never had any interaction prior to the murder.
Davis and several members of Roseman’s family spoke in court Friday afternoon. Sacramento Superior Court Judge Maryanne G. Gilliard then sentenced DeMarco to life in prison without the possibility of parole, the maximum sentence in this criminal case.
The judge gave DeMarco four opportunities to speak in court, hoping he would offer an apology or any condolences to Roseman’s family. The first three times, DeMarco declined the judge’s offer. The fourth time, he reasserted his defense.
“I’m not guilty, ma’am,” DeMarco told the judge. He didn’t say anything else during the nearly 90-minute hearing.
The judge responded to DeMarco, telling him the evidence against him in the trial was “overwhelming.”
“Mr. DeMarco, you took somebody from our community who was loved. You heard what his family said, they loved James. You didn’t even know him,” Gilliard said. “The fact of the matter is the jury of your peers found you guilty, and they were right.”
Defendant called a white supremacist
Deputy District Attorney Matthew Moore, who prosecuted DeMarco, said the defendant is a white supremacist who was angry over an armed robbery that he claimed was committed by a Black person and went “hunting” one night looking to shoot any Black person he encountered.
There was another man who was shot earlier that night nearby. The prosecutor said the other Black man wounded by gunfire survived, because the bullet didn’t hit a vital organ. He said the surviving victim had never met or interacted with DeMarco either.
“I think that really strikes at what is so tragic about this case is that this was completely senseless,” Moore said while asking the judge for the maximum prison sentence. “James had not done anything to him.”
Davis, Roseman’s eldest sister, has said her brother was fixing his parked car’s light fuses near a check cashing business when he was shot in the chest. She said in court DeMarco stole Roseman away from his parents, three sisters, three daughters and numerous relatives still battling with grief nearly a year after his death.
“You are the reason why our world will never be the same. You are the reason why my parents cry when they think no one is watching,” Davis told DeMarco. “You are the reason we sit in silence feeling the weight of what’s missing.”
The shooting was reported shortly before 12:30 a.m. in the 1300 block of Fulton Avenue at Hurley Way after gunfire was heard outside a 7-Eleven convenience store, Sacramento County sheriff’s officials have said.
Deputies arrived and found a man, later identified as Roseman, suffering from a gunshot wound in a nearby parking lot. Roseman was taken to a hospital where he was pronounced dead, sheriff’s officials said.
The murder charge against DeMarco also included enhancements for using a .22 caliber gun to kill Roseman and intentionally firing the gun at others from a vehicle with the intent to kill.
Roseman’s sisters have said the other victim was grazed by gunfire while standing outside the 7-Eleven convenience store, across the street from where Roseman was shot about 20 minutes later.
Murder leads to unbearable grief
Rose Bryant, Roseman’s mother, said in court that her heart remains empty without her son, and she struggles with a wound that will never really heal.
She spoke to her son the day before he was killed. She said her son told her how things were finally looking up for him, but DeMarco took away the hope for her son’s future.
“The grief is unbearable,” Bryant said. “I may look OK on the outside, but inside I’m torn. I’m tangled in knots, sorrow and loss.”
The jury found DeMarco guilty of firing a gun from a vehicle at the other victim in the June 9 shooting. This charge also included additional enhancements against DeMarco for using the .22 caliber gun and shooting at this victim for the purpose of intimidating and interfering with his rights because of status and perceived ethnicity, according to a filed criminal complaint.
DeMarco was also convicted of eight counts of being a convicted felon in possession of a gun, prosecutors said. The criminal complaint shows that these firearm charges included the gun used in the deadly shooting along with a .50 caliber Conn Valley Arms rifle he had in his possession at the time.
The gun charges in the conviction also included firearms found in DeMarco’s possession when he was arrested two days after the shooting, including the .50 caliber Conn Valley Arms rifle, a .22 caliber Ruger handgun, a .45 caliber Lyman Gun Company Plains rifle, a .50 caliber Traditions Inc Kentucky 50 model long handgun, a .22 Savage Arms Corp 64 model rifle and a .22 caliber Remington model 12 rifle.
DeMarco was previously convicted on a felony charge of making criminal threats in January 2014 in Sacramento County, according to the criminal complaint.
Video evidence at trial
On Friday, the judge said any mitigating factors that could reduce his sentence were greatly outweighed by the aggravating factors in the crimes DeMarco committed that night. She said DeMarco shot the surviving victim first and had his accomplice drive him around the block in a vehicle as the defendant sought his second victim, Roseman.
Gilliard said that same accomplice later provided his account of what happened that night and testified in the trial. She said that accomplice, who testified as a witness in the trial, came forward without asking for immunity, something that rarely happens in criminal cases.
She called DeMarco an “extremely dangerous, volatile and unstable” person. The judge said a video introduced as evidence showed DeMarco had hung a black baby chick, because he believes black chickens and white chickens shouldn’t be together.
“That’s what Mr. DeMarco’s viewpoint is on life,” the judge said.
She also spoke about a video DeMarco recorded when when he back to the crime scene in the small shopping center parking lot that night not long after he shot Roseman.
“I am very concerned about public safety with respect to Mr. DeMarco,” Gilliard said in court. “He deserves the full extent of what the law demands.”
DeMarco remains in custody at the Sacramento County Main Jail as he awaits a transfer to a California prison.
This story was originally published May 2, 2025 at 6:49 PM.
