Damia Mitchell will be imprisoned for the next 140 years. A jury found her guilty earlier in the month on a dozen charges, including voluntary manslaughter, aggravated assault, and gang-related charges.
It’s all connected to a brawl that resulted in a fatal shooting in February 2021. The shooting occurred on Mountain Ash Court in Dacula, according to investigators, 11Alive reports.
Mitchell, who was 17 at the time, and 4 others were charged in the death of Faith Burns, 20. According to court papers, Mitchell was a member of the Nine Trey Gangster Bloods, a criminal street gang with a lengthy history in the Atlanta area, and she was trying to advance her status within the gang.
Mitchell’s family, on the other hand, asserts that the trial was incomplete, and that the prosecution did not show enough evidence.
“These gang charges, those were just trumped up charges, false charges they put on my child,” Vanissa Jackson, Mitchell’s mother, said. “She’s not affiliated with gang members. She’s not in a gang.”
According to Jackson, Mitchell and another victim named in the investigation split up, and Burns was the victim’s new girlfriend.
When Mitchell went to pick up her belongings, a fight erupted and turned fatal. She was charged in August 2021 and convicted nearly a year afterwards.
Mitchell was sentenced to a total of 140 years in prison by a judge.
“Basically they’re saying you’ll never see daylight ever again in your life,” Jackson said. “They want my baby to die in jail for something that’s false and bogus.”
According to Thaddeus Johnson, a criminal justice expert at Georgia State University, when young women violate what he refers to as “traditional gender norms,” they face harsher punishments than young men.
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