December 12, 2025 / 4:43 PM EST / AP
The last inmate caught after a high-profile New Orleans jailbreak was sentenced Friday to two life terms for a 2018 double murder, with the judge sharply rebuking him for the disruption caused by his five months on the run.
Derrick Groves, 28, appeared in a New Orleans courtroom in shackles and an orange jumpsuit, two months after investigators located and captured him under a house in Atlanta. Groves was one of 10 inmates who escaped in May by crawling through a hole behind a jail toilet; graffiti left at the jail read “To Easy LoL.”
A jury last year convicted Groves of two counts of second-degree murder in the fatal shooting of Jamar Robinson and Byron Jackson at a 2018 Mardi Gras party. He also pleaded guilty last year to manslaughter in two other fatal shootings in a separate case. In addition to the life sentences, Groves was convicted of two counts of attempted murder for wounding others in the 2018 shooting; Judge Dennis Waldron imposed two consecutive 50-year sentences for those convictions to be stacked onto the life terms.
Waldron said Groves’ escape caused “concern, disappointment, frustration and displeasure” and noted the killings compounded tragedy already in Groves’ family history. The judge referenced the 1994 killing of Groves’ grandmother, Kim Groves, which prosecutors say was ordered by a corrupt New Orleans police officer after she reported misconduct.
“He chose to not honor the memory of his grandmother as she lay in that street in the Ninth Ward, shot to death,” Waldron said. “He made that conscious decision to go the other way and to kill, not once, not twice, not three times, but four times.”
Kadijah Jackson, sister of one of the victims, addressed the court, saying she sends photos of Groves to his daughter so the girl can show friends she once had a father. Jackson described finding her brother dying inside a car after Groves fired an AK-style rifle.
“He lifted his head, but deep down, I knew he wasn’t going to make it,” she said, sobbing. “That moment shattered something inside me. Since that day my life has felt like it is missing a piece that it felt it could never replace.”
During the hearing, Groves at times smirked and nodded from the defense table and later stared toward victims’ supporters. The judge pointed to video of Groves smiling and blowing kisses while being led away after his capture in Georgia, saying it suggested a lack of remorse and called the behavior “a final act of defiance.”
Groves’ attorney, Peter Freiberg, said his client maintains his innocence and plans to appeal the convictions, while expressing sympathy for the victims’ families.
