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The man convicted of gunning down Grammy-nominated hip-hop artist Nipsey Hussle has been sentenced to 60 years to life in prison.

On Wednesday, after hearing testimony about the immense loss of the hip-hop star and neighborhood leader, Superior Court Judge H. Clay Jacke II handed down the sentence to Eric R. Holder Jr., who was previously found guilty for the 2019 first-degree murder of the 33-year-old Hussle.

It was learned during the court proceedings that Holder suffered a lifetime of mental illness and abuse.

"I am very mindful of what was presented as to Mr. Holders mental health," Jacke said. "I am also mindful of the devastation caused to the victims and their families. I believe this sentence balances the two."

RAPPER NIPSEY HUSSLES LAST MOMENTS DETAILED AS MURDER TRIAL OPENS

FILE - Rapper Nipsey Hussle attends an NBA basketball game between the Golden State Warriors and the Milwaukee Bucks in Oakland, Calif., March 29, 2018. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez)

Holder Jr. fatally shot Hussle, whose legal name is Ermias Asghedom, outside the clothing store Hussle founded, the Marathon, in a South Los Angeles neighborhood in 2019.

A jury found him guilty in July 2021.

The sentence comes after a monthlong trial, where jurors also convicted Holder of two counts of attempted voluntary manslaughter and two counts of assault with a firearm for the gunfire that hit two other men at the scene.

The other two victims survived their injuries.

Jacke sentenced Holder to 25 years to life for the murder and 25 more for a firearm sentencing enhancement.

FILE - Eric Holder Jr. sits in the courtroom at Clara Shortridge Foltz Criminal Justice Center on Sept. 15, 2022, in Los Angeles. (Apu Gomes/Pool Photo via AP)

NIPSEY HUSSLE, GRAMMY-NOMINATED RAPPER, SHOT DEAD IN LOS ANGELES

He also sentenced Holder an additional 10 years for the assault with firearm convictions.

The judge gave Holder credit for the nearly four years he has already served.

Holder, who was dressed in orange jail attire, stared blankly throughout the proceedings and did not react when the sentence was announced. He only spoke to confirm with the judge that he understood the circumstances.

Before the sentence was handed down, prosecutors said Holder and Hussle had a brief conversation after they ran into each other on a Sunday afternoon outside the clothing store.

Holder left and returned about 10 minutes later and shot Hussle at least 10 times, they said.

Nipsey Hussle attends the 61st Annual Grammy Awards at Staples Center on February 10, 2019, in Los Angeles, California. (David Crotty/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images)

Herman "Cowboy" Douglas, a close friend of Hussle who was with him the day he was killed and testified during the trial, told the judge that both he and the South Los Angeles community where Hussle was a business leader were deeply impacted by the tremendous loss.

"Nipsey was my friend, he was like a son, he was like a dad," said Douglas. "Our community right now, we lost everything, everything we worked for. One mans mistake, one mans action, messed up a whole community."

Douglas said Hussle's store and surrounding businesses that he owned and supported have been closed down following his death.

ANOTHER CALIFORNIA SHOOTING LEAVES 3 DEAD, 4 INJURED IN RITZY LA NEIGHBORHOOD

Hussles friend also told the judge he wanted to know the motivation behind the killing: "I dont care what you give this guy. It aint about the time. I just want to know why. The world wants to know why. Why someone would do that?"

Nipsey Hussle performs onstage at the Warner Music Pre-Grammy Party at the NoMad Hotel on February 7, 2019, in Los Angeles, California. (Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images for Warner Music)

Public defender Aaron Jansen asked for a lesser sentence of 25 years to life that would allow some chance at release and rehabilitation, detailing his client suffered a childhood of physical abuse and poverty.

As he reached adulthood, Jansen said Holder suffered "a terrible descent into mental illness" that led to "years of torment and struggle" that included agonizing auditory hallucinations.

He also said life behind bars is "going to be brutal [and] is going to be short. Hes already received numerous death threats."

Jansen also read a letter from Holder's father, Eric Holder Sr. apologizing to Hussle's family and to the other victims.

"I know there are not enough words that would fill the void, the pain, the deep sorrow that they feel," the letter read. "I question myself every day asking if I as a father did everything to help Eric Jr. stabilize his mental health."

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Hussle and Holder had known each other for years growing up in South LA, as both were aspiring rappers. Holder never achieved the same success as Hussle, who would become a local hero and a national celebrity.

The evidence against Holder was overwhelming from eyewitnesses to surveillance cameras from local businesses that captured his arrival, the shooting and his departure that Jansen admitted during the trial that Holder had shot Hussle and asked jurors to find him guilty of voluntary manslaughter.

After deliberating for just six hours, jurors found him guilty of first-degree murder.

The Associated Press contributed to this report

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Nipsey Hussle's killer Eric Holder Jr. gets 60 years to life in prison ...

Eric Holder, Nipsey Hussle's killer sentenced to 60 years

Eric Holder Jr., the man convicted of murdering Grammy-winning rapper Nipsey Hussle in 2019, was sentenced Wednesday to 60 years to life in prison with credit for the 1,423 days already served.

LOS ANGELES - Eric Holder Jr., the man convicted of murdering Grammy-winning rapper Nipsey Hussle in a 2019 shooting in South Los Angeles, was sentenced Wednesday to 60 years to life in prison with credit for the 1,423 days already served.

Holder's sentencing hearing had been postponed several times since last September. In December, Superior Court Judge H. Clay Jacke rejected a defense motion to reduce Holder's conviction to second-degree murder or voluntary manslaughter and turned down the defense's bid for a new trial.

In July, a Los Angeles County jury convicted Holder Jr. of first-degree murder in the killing of Hussle outside his clothing store in March 2019. Holder was also convicted of attempted voluntary manslaughter for injuring two bystanders in the incident, along with 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 victims.

A jury of nine women and three men deliberated for about six hours over two days before reaching the verdict.

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The shooting followed a conversation the two men had about rumors that Holder had been acting as an informant for authorities. Jansen argued that being publicly accused of being a "snitch" by a person as prominent as Hussle brought on a "heat of passion" in Holder that made him not guilty of first-degree murder.

Hussle, whose real name was Ermias Joseph Asghedom, and Holder had known each other for years growing up as members of the Rollin 60s in South Los Angeles when a chance meeting outside the clothing store the rapper opened in his neighborhood led to the shooting, and his death.

Deputy District Attorney John McKinney called the killing "cold-blooded" and "calculated," saying that Holder had "quite a bit of time for premeditation and deliberation" before returning to the parking lot near Slauson Avenue and Crenshaw Boulevard where the rapper was shot 10 to 11 times.

A jury of nine women and three men deliberated for about six hours over two days before reaching the verdict.

After Hussle's death, thousands of people were on hand in April 2019 for a service in his honor, with singer Stevie Wonder and rapper Snoop Dogg among those paying tribute to him.

In a letter that was read during the service, former President Barack Obama wrote, "While most folks look at the Crenshaw neighborhood where he grew up and see only gangs, bullets and despair, Nipsey saw potential. He saw hope. He saw a community that, even through its flaws, taught him to always keep going."

A local and now international rap star is giving back to his community in South Los Angeles in a big way that is giving his family, fans and community hope and motivation.

RELATED: Rapper Nipsey Hussle creates positive change in South LA

Hussle had just released his major-label debut album and earned his first Grammy nomination when he was killed.

The rapper-entrepreneur was posthumously honored with two Grammy Awards in 2020 for best rap performance for "Racks in the Middle" and for best rap/sung performance for "Higher."

The Associated Press and City News Service contributed to this report.

Original post:
Nipsey Hussle's killer sentenced to 60 years in prison

Eric Holder Jr., who was convicted of murdering rapper Nipsey Hussle outside the musicians South Los Angeles clothing store in 2019, has been sentenced to 60 years to life in state prison.

The sentence was handed down today by Los Angeles Superior Court Judge H. Clay Jacke II. The 33-year-old Holder was found guilty of first-degree murder in July 2022 following a jury trial. He later was convicted on two counts each of attempted voluntary manslaughter and assault with a firearm. The latter charges involved the wounding of two other people in the March 31, 2019, shooting.

Holder was arrested on April 2, 2019, and charged days later. According to reports, Holder showed no reaction during the reading of his sentence today.

Holder had admitted gunning down the Grammy-winning Hussle in front of the musicians South Los Angeles clothing store, the Marathon. Holder maintained that the killing was an impulsive act committed in the heat of passion, as his attorney Aaron Jansen argued during the trial.

Todays sentencing was handed down following a hearing in which a friend of Hussles made a statement and a letter writter by Holders father was read in court.

City News Service contributed to this report

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Nipsey Hussle Killer Eric Holder Jr. Sentenced To 60 Years To Life In ...

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Close your eyes and imagine a world without Russia.

If youre in the Baltics, Poland, Ukraine or any of the other territories that have suffered through the centuries under Russian repression, the scenario might sound like deliverance.

Russia is going to disintegrate, former Czech Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg, a prominent aristocrat and longtime Vclav Havel confidant, recently predicted. Large parts of it will seek independence as soon as they can.

The prince should be careful what he wishes for.

While most experts say Schwarzenbergs prediction remains unlikely, the risk that Russia explodes under pressure from its failed assault on Ukraine has nonetheless set alarm bells ringing from Berlin to Washington, as military and diplomatic strategists contemplate a postwar scenario in which the country fractures into a patchwork of warlord-controlled fiefdoms, similar to those that dominated Afghanistan in the 1990s or present-day Libya.

When in history have the Russians faced a truly major defeat and their politics remained intact? asked Peter Rough, a former official in the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush who now heads the Center on Europe and Eurasia at the Hudson Institute, a Washington-based think tank. I dont see how a major military defeat could allow Putin to remain and the borders of the Russian Federation to remain what they are today.

Scenarios range from uprisings among Russias more than 20 ethnic territories sprinkled across the countrys 11 time zones to a full-scale descent intothe kind of conflict and lawlessness that has gripped Libya since the fall of its dictator Muammar Gaddafi. Either would pose grave threats to regional stability, with potentially profound consequences for Europe, including further disruption of supply chains, clashes between nuclear-armed factions and new waves of refugees fleeing a destabilized Russia.

The subject is so sensitive that the officials refuse to speak publicly about their deliberations or even acknowledge their contingency planning for fear of giving Russian President Vladimir Putin a welcome talking point and fueling Russian support for the war. (A recent event and report by the Hudson Institute on the issue prompted an angryresponsefrom Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, for example.)

When asked byPOLITICO to discuss such scenarios during the Munich Security Conference last week, Western officials declined to address the subject on the record.

Could it happen? For sure, said Ivan Krastev, a political scientist and chairman of Bulgarias Center for Liberal Strategies who has advised a number of European leaders. Krastev stressed that disintegration isnt likely, but not impossible.

But focusing on this option is totally counterproductive, he added. If you say, were here to dismantle Russia, youre making a strong argument for Putins narrative that the West is the aggressor.

In fact, the Russian president returned to that theme again Tuesday in an address to the countrys political and military establishment on the state of the country ahead of the first anniversary of his full-scale assault on Ukraine.The elites of the West do not hide their purpose, he said, suggesting thatthe U.S. and its allies aim to destroy Russia.

On Wednesday, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedevwent even further,sayingRussia will disappear if it loses the war in Ukraine, which he blamed on the U.S.

If Russia stops the special military operation without achieving victory, Russia will disappear, it will be torn to pieces, Medvedev saidin a Telegram post, using the euphemism for Russias invasion of Ukraine.

That message resonates in a country repeatedly wracked by military conflict and still traumatized by the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Russias travails during World War I helped spark the Russian Revolution and a civil war that pitted Vladimir LeninsBolsheviks against a motley group of royalists, capitalists and other political forces known as the White Army. Thewar, one of the bloodiest in Russian history, included a number of pogroms targeting Jews. It ended in 1923 with the Red Army prevailing but left deep divisions in the society.

The dissolution of the Soviet Union in the 1990s which saw the breaking away of countries like Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan, as well as EU countries like Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania played out more peacefully, but its far from certain similar agitation from the peripheries today wouldnt be met with a more forceful response.

The structure of the Soviet Union made its breakup relatively straightforward from a legal standpoint.In contrast, the Russian Federation is a single country with a very powerful central administration. Unlike the Soviet Union, where half of the citizens were non-Russian, 80 percent of the population of modern-day Russia identifies as Russian.

The most important factor preventing bloodshed in 1991 was that Russia didnt object to dismantling the Soviet Union. Its difficult to imagine that either Putin or a potential successor would idly stand by or that a majority of the population would allow them to if regions likeBashkortostanin the southern Uralsor Siberia, Russias treasure chest, where most if its natural resources lay buried,tried to break off.

One worry among Western planners is that if the war in Ukraine ends with the Kremlins defeat as most hope Russian soldiers will return home and carry on the fight there, helping to fuel the countrys disintegration.

Vladimir Putins attempt to reassemble the Kremlins lost empire could end up costing Russia at least some of its territory | Anatolii Stepanov/AFP via Getty Images

Many of the men fighting for Russia in Ukraine come from underprivileged Russian territories including the mountains of eastern Siberia, where much of the population has ethnic and cultural ties to Mongolia, and the NorthCaucasus,an area of diverse ethnicity that includes Chechnya and Dagestan.

The Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, who played a central role in crushing the Islamist uprising in Chechnya in the early 2000s, recently said he intends to set up a private army modeled on the Wagner Group, a brutal mercenary force controlled by Putin allyYevgeny Prigozhin.

Speaking in 2011 in the North Caucasus, Putin made little secret of his distaste for the percolating independence movements there.

If this happens, then, at the same moment,not even an hour, but a second,there will be those who want to do the same with other territorial entities of Russia and it will be a tragedy that will affect every citizen of Russia without exception, hesaid.

That suggests any move by regions to free themselves of Moscows control would be bloody, both between the central government and would-be secessionists and among the regions themselves.

New statelets would fight with one anotherover bordersand economic assets, Marlene Laruelle, who directsthe Institute for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies at George Washington University, wrote in a recent essay.Moscow elites, who control a huge nuclear arsenal, would react with violence to any secessionism.

What makes the possibility of a Russian collapse so alarming is, of course, the countrys nuclear arsenal a strategic ace-in-the-sleeve Putin has repeatedly made mention of over the past 12 months. On Tuesday, the Russian president announced he was suspending Russias participation in the New START Treaty, the last remaining nuclear arms control pact between Moscow and Washington.

In the run-up to the collapse of the Soviet Union, the U.S. and its allies were far from sanguine about the nuclear threat. U.S. intelligence warned at the time that tactical nuclear weapons, possibly including so-called suitcase bombs, could end up on the terrorist black market if steps werent taken to secure them.

While Washington welcomed the independence of the Baltic states, there was deep concern that parts of the Soviet nuclear arsenal could fall into the wrong hands in other corners of the empire, including Kazakhstan and Ukraine, with disastrous consequences.

Thats less of a threat in Russia today for the simple reason that there arent nuclear weapons in the potential breakaway regions, according to Western analysts.

The more worrying prospect is the outbreak of conflict between members of the Russian establishment, and a struggle for control of the armed forces. Political infighting has already broken out between the Wagner Group chief, Prigozhin, and the Russian defense minister, Sergei Shoigu, and the chief of the general staff of the armed forces, Valery Gerasimov.

On Tuesday, Prigozhin a Putin ally whose soldiers have been fighting near the Ukrainian town of Bakhmut accused his rivalsof withholding ammunition and air transport, adding that their actions could amount to treason.

A big question in any scenario of Russian disintegration is what role China would play. While instability in its resource-rich neighbor would present Beijing with a host of opportunities to fuel its voracious appetite for raw materials, from natural gas to potash, most observers believe it will not seek to redraw Russias borders.

China is going to be very careful, Krastev said.

Nor is there likely to be much demand by local Russian populations in Siberia or elsewhere to seek out Chinese domination. Russias outer regions are generally poor and rely heavily on the central administration in Moscow for money, one more reason for them to stick with the devil they know.

Whats clear is that while the crack-up of Russia might still be a low-probability event, its not one that Western planners can afford to ignore. AsRussia watchers debate the prospects for the countrys decolonization, they shouldnt dismiss the possibilitythat Putins attempt to reassemble the Kremlins lost empire could end up costing it at least some of its territory.

The tragedy of Russia is that it doesnt know where its borders are, Schwarzenberg, whose family fled Soviet-controlled Czechoslovakia in 1948, said.

The danger is that this could quickly become tragic not just for Russia, but for the rest of the world too.

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Libya with nukes: Is the West ready for Putin to lose?

A new report by Crisis Group warns against international donors cutting aid to Afghanistan in the wake of the Talibans curbs on womens education and ability to work at NGOs, instead arguing for Western countries to find a liminal space between pariah and legitimate status to respond to the ongoing humanitarian crisis.

The report, released on Thursday, focused primarily on two Taliban edicts announced in December the first suspending female education at private and public universities, and the second banning Afghan women from working at local and international NGOs. The moves led to protests and global condemnation, while sounding a possible death knell for the Talibans initial openness to engage with the international community following its takeover of the country in August 2021.

Accompanying the Talibans clampdown has been a reassessment of international aid from key international government donors, according to the reports authors. That aid, despite being immediately paused in the wake of the groups rise to power, had resumed amid concerns over widespread hunger and poverty in the country of about 40 million.

Donors are turning away from Afghanistan, disgusted by the Talibans restrictions on womens basic freedoms, Graeme Smith, Crisis Groups Senior Consultant on Afghanistan, said in a statement accompanying the report.

However, cutting aid to send a message about womens rights will only make the situation worse for all Afghans, he added. The most principled response to the Talibans misogyny would be finding ways to mitigate the harms inflicted on women and other vulnerable groups.

The report which drew on dozens of interviews with Afghan and international women activists, current and former Afghan officials, teachers, students, aid workers, human rights defenders, development officials, diplomats, business leaders and other interlocutors noted Western governments in the second half of 2022 warned aid agencies of a growing sense of donor fatigue towards Afghanistan. It did not name the governments to which it referred.

The authors further warned that following the most recent rights rollbacks, many Western politicians fear voters will not accept the idea of their taxes helping a country ruled by an odious regime, while adding that consultations in January 2023 among major donors produced initial thinking that aid should be trimmed back to send a message to the Taliban, although the governments involved did not agree on which budgets to cut.

Again, the report did not name the countries in question.

The United Nations, which has already had to roll back some aid operations in the wake of the ban on NGO workers, has appealed for $4.6bn to aid Afghanistan. The sum is the largest request for a single country ever. The UN has warned that 28 million people are in need of humanitarian aid, accounting for two-thirds of the countrys population.

But Crisis Group warned that Western governments seemed poised to fall significantly short of that appeal.

The report authors added that options discussed in the wake of the December edict have included deepening sanctions, cutting aid or levying other forms of punishment in response.

They noted that the G7 grouping of the worlds most wealthy countries had said there would be consequences for how our countries engage with the Taliban in the wake of the December edicts. The grouping had provided $3bn in humanitarian funding for Afghanistan in 2022, the report noted.

In the United States, which imposed a raft of new sanctions on the Taliban in October over their treatment of women, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said: There are going to be costs if this is not reversed.

The reports authors argued any approach that included short-term cuts to aid in the hopes of undermining the Talibans authority would further harm those targeted by the Talibans recent moves.

Testing such assumptions would involve a high-stakes gamble with potentially millions of human lives. Win or lose, the costs of taking the gamble would be paid in large part by Afghan women, as the burdens of the crisis fall disproportionately on them, the report said.

It noted that women and girls often get the smallest share of food in Afghan families, which means that in times of scarcity they are most vulnerable to malnutrition and disease, while child marriages tend to increase during times of increased hardship.

Instead, Crisis Group argued that continuing to offer humanitarian aid, while supporting longer-term development aid, would address the populations immediate needs, while undermining the Talibans overheated rhetoric about a titanic clash between Islam and the West.

The authors further cautioned against expecting outside pressure to change the Talibans approach, highlighting the opaque nature of the groups decision-making. They noted its reclusive leader, Hibatullah Akhundzada, has appeared to insist on the strict measures out of personal conviction and to assert his authority over the movement and the country.

As the world considers its options, the idea of coaxing the Taliban into behaving like an internationally acceptable government should be set aside for the moment, the report said.

There is little room for opposing views within the Taliban leadership, it added, and influence from outside Muslim figures has proven ineffective as the Talibans policies are drawn not only from their atypical interpretation of Islam, but also from aspects of local culture.

Meanwhile, political talks with the Taliban aimed at creating a roadmap to normalisation have all but stalled. It also remains unclear how much money the group may be earning from narcotics and other forms of smuggling, bringing into question how much sanctions will actually affect the upper echelons of leadership.

Western policymakers must stand up for Afghan women and girls. At the same time, they should be careful to avoid self-defeating policies, the report concluded.

Practical steps that materially benefit Afghan women, improving their lives in tangible ways, would be superior to angry denunciations of the Talibans wrongheadedness.

The authors added: The Taliban should find a better way of making decisions, instead of following the whims of a leader who has proven his determination to oppress women and block the rebuilding of his country. Until that happens, the future of Afghanistan looks bleak.

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Report says donors turning away from Taliban-ruled Afghanistan