Prosecution’s Plea Offer Is ‘Not Long Enough,’ Victim’s Mother Tells Judge

By Andrew Michaels - September 26, 2022
Court | Daily Stories | Homicides | Shooting | Suspects | Victims |

The mother of Tyrell Johnson-Woods, who was shot multiple times and killed in June 2021, asked a Baltimore City Circuit Court judge to be “as harsh as we can go” while considering the terms of the prosecution’s plea offer for 26-year-old Brandi Burrows on Sept. 26.

Earlier in the proceedings, the 24-year-old victim’s mother acknowledged the prosecution’s plea of life, suspending all but 25 years, for first-degree murder, saying that the offer “is not long enough.”

“My son wasn’t given a chance,” she told Baltimore City Circuit Court Judge Videtta Brown, stifling tears. “He gave them everything they asked for and they still took his life.”

The woman was referring to the armed robbery that led to her son’s murder on June 18, 2021, when officers with the Baltimore Police Department found him with multiple gunshot wounds on the 3800 block of Derby Manor Drive just before 4 p.m.

Johnson-Woods was taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

The prosecutor and Burrows’ defense attorney, Natalie Finegar, informed Judge Brown that the plea was “contingent on other matters,” specifically a handgun charge against the defendant in another case. The offer in that case was for 15 years, the first five years without parole, to run concurrent to the plea for murder.

After a lengthy private discussion between the judge, prosecutor, and defense attorney, Judge Brown proceeded with the plea, which she said was life, suspending all but 20 years, for first-degree murder—as opposed to the aforementioned 25-year sentence. This sentence would be in addition to the 15-year sentence in the other case.

The prosecutor later declined to clarify the term to serve, as stipulated by the plea, with Baltimore Witness.

Prior to the conclusion of Monday’s proceedings, Judge Brown told Burrows that she was on probation in Baltimore County and that that judge’s potential sentence for violating probation would run consecutively to the terms outlined in her latest plea.

Judge Brown scheduled Burrows for sentencing on Feb. 13, 2023, at 1:30 p.m.