Minneapolis Prosecutor Faces Outrage After Negotiating Concurrent Sentence For Double Murderer
The grieving families of murder victims Stageina Whiting and Eloe Lomax are criticizing a legal decision allowing Marquez Hill-Turnipseed to serve the sentences for his crimes concurrently instead of consecutively.
Despite grievances with the arrangement, presiding judge Michael Burns upheld the negotiated agreement, prepared by Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty’s office.
The controversial resolution comes as another in a series of criticized deals stemming from progressive prosecution strategies.
The relatives of both victims have criticized the legal decision to join two separate murder cases together, with Hill-Turnipseed receiving a single 40-year sentence rather than two different sentences served consecutively.
As reported by Kare 11, Whiting’s mother, Tasha Blanks, questioned the choice to handle two homicides that occurred years apart and merge them as if it were a single case.
“They were two different people. They should have made trial on two different cases, not put together. He did them at two different times. Like, no,” Blanks said.
Lomax’s mother, Talanda Burks, joined Blanks in objecting to the arrangement. She explained, “He murdered my son first, and it should have been time for Eloe’s murder, then the young lady’s. And it shouldn’t have been joined together. He ruined two families.”
Whiting’s aunt, TT Toni, emphasized how distinctly the crimes impacted both families, as the victims lived very separate lives.
“This child had a whole life over here,” Toni noted. “And this child had a whole life over here. So this family is grieving differently. They lost so much over there with their son. We lost; this baby will have to grow up without her mother.”
Two Murders, Three Years Apart
The crimes were committed three years apart and under different circumstances. The initial murder involved Lomax, who was killed in a drive-by shooting in Minneapolis in 2022.
The second murder occurred three years after Lomax, and Hill-Turnipseed was identified as the shooter in the June 2025 incident at Boom Island Park, where he killed Whiting and wounded five others.
According to a report by CBS News, the perpetrator told investigators that he went to the park to aid his fellow gang members in attacking another gang.
After an earlier confrontation that involved a shooting, Hill-Turnipseed returned to the park in a Challenger and fired into a crowd because he was reportedly “angry his friend had been shot.”
Whiting was an innocent bystander caught up in a gang dispute. Her death came amid a chaotic scene involving at least 100 people. The Boom Island shooting incident has been referred to as a “war zone,” and police found 130 shell casings when they arrived at the scene.
Judge Accepts Plea Deal But Understands The Families’ Grievances
During sentencing, Burns upheld the negotiated agreement but addressed the concerns the families had regarding the deal.
“I certainly don’t see my job here as a rubber stamp for anything that the lawyers do. I understand people might not be happy with the negotiation in this case, but I’m going to follow the negotiation in this case.”
The judge had once rejected a previous plea deal negotiated by the prosecutor’s office in another case involving the murder of Steve Markey. He accepted the deal in this case and handed down a 40-year sentence.
Hill-Turnipseed apologized to the families of Lomax and Whiting and compared his imprisonment to the deaths of his victims. He said, “My family got to go through the same thing.”
Burns condemned the comparison, noting that a prison sentence cannot be equated to a human life: “You have not lost your life in the same way the family of Eloh and Stageina have,” the judge told Hill-Turnipseed.
America’s ‘Wokest’ Prosecutor Mary Moriarty’s Office Faces Criticism
The case has reignited scrutiny surrounding Moriarty, who took office as Hennepin County Attorney in 2023 following a career as a public defender, and, per the Daily Mail, has been labeled one of America’s “wokest” prosecutors.
Moriarty campaigned on a progressive platform targeting criminal justice reform; her pattern of controversial plea deals has previously been met with outrage by families of murder victims.
In a 2023 Minnesota Star Tribune report, Sherice Barnett, whose son was killed, stated she was shocked that the teenager who committed the crime would avoid prison. “
“I couldn’t breathe,” she said, “I never would have imagined in a million years that it would have went that way.”
Veteran attorney Catherine Markey, whose son was also killed, stated that the controversial deals were a trend because of Moriarty.
The ‘Woke’ Prosecutor’s Office Has Addressed The Ongoing Scrutiny
In response to the outrage, the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office defended the arrangement by Moriarty.
They noted, “The number of years any defendant is sentenced to serve has never and will never reflect the value of the person whose life they took… That value is incalculable, and the loss leaves scars that will never heal.”
The office added that its resolutions are determined by “case strategy and public safety,” emphasizing that Hill-Turnipseed “will be removed for decades for the community he harmed.”
