NJ man gets 18 years in beating death of man dumped under mattress

JERSEY CITY — A Newark man has been sentenced to 18 years in prison for his role in the beating death of another man whose body was found under a mattress weighted down by cinder blocks.

Mark Browne was sentenced Thursday after he was earlier found guilty of reckless manslaughter in the 2012 death of 24-year-old Darryl Williams. Browne was found not guilty of murder and aggravated manslaughter charges.

He had faced up to a decade in prison on the reckless manslaughter conviction, The Jersey Journal reported, but qualified for an extended sentence of up to 20 years because of his criminal history.

"I turned my head," Browne said in a statement. "I should have done more."

Browne, 46, was among six people involved in what authorities described as torture. Williams was gagged, taped, hooded, bound with electrical cord and shot with a BB gun inside a Newark apartment, prosecutors said. He also was beaten with a table leg and another object before he was driven away and thrown on the ground on the mattress behind a North Bergen gas station.

"It is probably, in my years as an attorney and a judge, the most horrific conduct I have ever seen put on another human being," Hudson County Superior Court Judge John Young told Browne.

Daeshawn Jennings was sentenced to 18 years in state prison for aggravated manslaughter in the killing. Kathleen Jones also pleaded guilty and was sentenced to a dozen years in prison.

Qudeera Adams, Nydia Mozee, and Latoya Mozee, all of Newark, were also charged in Williams' death.

Adams, who awaits trial, testified that Browne said he was going to knock Williams out and "teach him not to hit girls."

Latoya Mozee pleaded guilty to endangering an injured victim and Nydia Mozee pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit aggravated assault, according to the transcripts of the plea hearings.

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