BLM gunman who shot a driver in the head has charges dropped, sentence reduced, eligible for parole in 2026

Prosecutors and judges are not doing their jobs

The public is forgetting a lot of things. The absurd theater surrounding the COVID pandemic and hysteria over vaccines seems like a distant memory. The huge outpouring of organized violence surrounding the death of George Floyd, probably the worst the nation has experienced in decades, is also slipping away.

One incident that is often forgotten is the shooting that took place in the small town Alamosa, CO. In Alamosa we saw the familiar pattern of the riots: Black Lives Matter protestors would block the road. When drivers tried to go around them, their cars would be swarmed. These protestors decided that they were the ones who controlled who drove down streets in the towns they occupied, and they were willing to use force to back that up.

On June 4, 2020 Danny Pruitt, a disabled veteran raising a young daughter alone, was driving through Alamosa. He approached the BLM blockade and slowly began inching forward. Protestors rushed to his car to block him from proceeding down the road. When the truck continued to slowly move forward, the crowd parted. However, as Pruitt drove on, one of the protestors, wearing a mask and sunglasses to conceal his face, pulled a gun from his pocket and fired once through Pruitt’s back window. The bullet struck Pruitt in the back of the head.

The shooter was James Marshall, a 27 year old criminal defense attorney who was active in the BLM movement. After the shooting he shaved his beard and changed clothes. Pruitt, left for dead in the middle of the road, miraculously survived the gunshot wound to his head. However, he received permanent brain damage that will affect him for the rest of his life. There are pieces of the bullet still lodged in his skull. Removing them could be fatal.

Three days before the shooting, Marshall posted on his Facebook page:

Since being anti-fascist is about to be labeled as terrorism, I’m going to make a record: 75 years ago, our nation finished a brutal World War against fascism. 400,000 American Patriots died to protect the free world from fascism. Millions of Europeans were murdered by fascists. Millions more gave their lives to protect others from fascism’s insidious ideas. Being anti-fascist is the default stance in a democracy.

Police soon apprehended Marshall, and yet another familiar pattern from the 2020 rioting made an appearance. Marshall claimed he was acting in defense of others. His wife, who had open carried a gun at earlier BLM events, was also in the crowd. Video evidence showed that she was never in danger. No one was. Although Marshall was unambiguously guilty, he received an extremely lenient plea deal from San Luis Valley District Attorney Alonzo Payne. Payne allowed Marshall to plead out to an unrelated 3rd degree felony—“tampering with the body of a deceased person.”

Payne was one of many progressive prosecutors elected to office in 2020 following the George Floyd riots. He was endorsed by Senator Bernie Sanders and campaigned on a platform of “criminal justice reform,” “economic justice,” and eliminating cash bail. Payne simply stopped prosecuting all drug cases in his district. He regularly gave people generous plea agreements for serious crimes, including murder and child abuse. A driver who killed a woman while high on drugs was given no jailtime at all. Payne hired other activists to serve in his office who regularly lied to police and victims, dismissing cases in which there was overwhelming evidence of guilt. He even hit his former primary opponent with bogus felony charges. During his 2 years in office, Payne took only 5 criminal cases to trial. It was complete anarchy.

All of the other charges against Marshall, including attempted murder, were dropped by Payne’s office despite the fact that Marshall had been captured on video committing the crime. Prosecutors agreed to recommend the minimum sentence for a 3rd degree felony, just 4 years in jail. Marshall was even allowed to make an Alford plea, a special arrangement where a defendant will publicly maintain his innocence but accept punishment just to avoid a trial. It was an impossibly good deal. Adding insult to injury, the Presiding Disciplinary Judge of the Colorado Supreme Court, who handles professional discipline for lawyers, decided to suspend Marshall’s law license for a mere 3 years.

Fortunately the judge in the criminal case rejected the prosecutor’s recommendations. He sentenced Marshall to 11 years in jail. However, this punishment didn’t stick. Just a year into his prison term, Marshall requested that his sentenced be reduced to 4 years. Although the judge rejected this request, he agreed to shave an additional year off of Marshall’s sentence in light of good behavior in prison. With this new agreement, Marshall would be eligible for parole in late 2027. Six years for shooting someone in the head at a roadblock.

Not even this sentence seemed to be enough, unfortunately. As of this year Marshall’s estimated parole date has been moved forward yet again, this time to April 2026. Although the prosecutor’s initial sentencing recommendation of just four years for shooting an innocent person in the head was rejected as ridiculously low, it appears that Marshall will do only a little bit more than that.

In the intervening period, puff pieces have come out detailing Marshall’s favorite coffee shops and trivia night. The victim has been smeared as an unstable provocateur. Marshall still insists he was trying to defend his wife even though she was well out of the way of the truck, which was passing through the blockade without incident. Two attorneys at his last sentencing appeal said were ready to hire him immediately upon his release from prison.

This guy is not sorry. None of these people care about the driver he shot in the head. When the next “protestor” shoots someone at one of these roadblocks, they’ll support him just as ardently. Red states need to impose real consequences in these cases if they want to discourage this behavior. Everyone involved in these armed roadblocks, armed or unarmed, needs to go to jail for a long time. There also needs to be a more organized effort to inform the public about instances of leftist violence. The moment these cases slip out of the public eye, sentences get reduced to nothing. Following this stuff isn’t expensive or complicated but it appears none of the well funded media operations in the conservative sphere are willing to do it.

There is one happy ending in this story, however. District Attorney Payne created so many problems for the people of his district during his short tenure that he faced a recall election supported by all major public officials in the area. The rampant criminality Payne enabled became so bad that the Colorado Attorney General’s office put a special prosecutor in place to handle Payne’s cases. Facing certain defeat in an election, Payne resigned rather than allow himself to be recalled. In 2022, the Colorado Supreme Court disbarred Payne for his gross negligence and permanently banned him from practicing law in the state. It’s a shame he and his former employees aren’t all in jail.