A California court has upheld Eric Ronald Holder’s first-degree murder conviction for shooting rapper Nipsey Hussle outside the musician’s South Los Angeles clothing store.
Holder Jr., now 34, is serving a 60-years-to-life state prison sentence for the March 31, 2019, killing of the 33-year-old rapper, whose real name was Ermias Joseph Asghedom.
In its 25-page ruling, the three-justice panel from California’s 2nd District Court of Appeal rejected the defense’s challenge to Superior Court Judge H. Clay Jacke’s decision to sustain the prosecution’s objection to a portion of the closing argument by Holder’s trial attorney that purported to describe what the defendant was thinking and feeling before the shooting.
“Appellant did not testify, and no other evidence about what appellant was thinking or feeling prior to the shooting was presented to the jury,” Presiding Justice Elwood Lui wrote on behalf of the panel. “Thus, the inferences about appellant’s specific thoughts and feelings that defense counsel purported to draw were not based on the evidence, and the trial court did not abuse its discretion in limiting that portion of counsel’s argument.”
The panel also turned down the defense’s claim that the judge abused his discretion when he declined to dismiss a gun enhancement that added 25 years to life to Holder’s sentence, finding that “the record here affirmatively shows the trial court fully understood and properly exercised its discretion when it declined to dismiss the firearm enhancement.”
“The court emphasized its responsibility to consider and evaluate the mitigation evidence presented by the defense, particularly the evidence of appellant’s history of mental illness, and it indicated that the sentence it was about to pronounce balanced appellant’s mitigating evidence with the devastation appellant had caused to the victims and their families,” Lui wrote, with Associate Justices Judith Ashmann-Gerst and Brian Hoffstadt concurring in the ruling.
Along with the first-degree murder charge, Holder was found guilty in July 2022 of two counts of attempted voluntary manslaughter and assault with a firearm involving two other men who were injured in the shooting and one count of possession of a firearm by a felon.
Jurors also found true allegations that he personally and intentionally discharged a handgun and that he personally inflicted great bodily injury on one of the two surviving victims.
The judge refused in December 2022 to reduce Holder’s conviction to second-degree murder or voluntary manslaughter, with the 60-years-to-life sentence subsequently being handed down in February 2023.
Deputy District Attorney John McKinney noted in his sentencing memorandum that Holder “used two handguns during the commission of his crimes” and “inflicted 11 gunshot wounds with no less than 10 separately fired shots into the body of Asghedom from close range” and that he “kicked Asghedom in the head while he lay dying on the ground.”
Defense attorney Aaron Jansen said at the sentencing that his client was already the subject of death threats and that “his life in prison is going to be hell for as long as it lasts.”
