Last month, a federal judge in Oakland, California, ruled that police must generally have a warrant before they use a cell-site simulator to locate a criminal suspect. However, the same judge also ruled that, in this particular case, a warrant was not needed, and so the evidence obtained from it could stand.

That ruling in United States v. Ellis effectively ended the case of the three remaining men charged with racketeering and the attempted murder of an Oakland police officer in 2013. A fourth defendant, Damien McDaniel, who had previously pleaded guilty in April 2017, was sentenced to 33 years in prison on Wednesday.

According to prosecutors, McDaniel and two other co-defendants, Deante Kincaid (aka “Tay Tay”) and Joseph Pennymon (aka “Junkie”) also took similar plea deals last month. That leaves Purvis Ellis as the sole defendant left in the case—he is expected to plead guilty at a Thursday hearing.

Ars chronicled the case more than two years ago in a feature that examined the Ellis case. As we reported at the time, McDaniel was the one who managed to wrest Officer Eric Karsseboom’s gun away from him and shoot the cop in the wrist. Karsseboom, who was not in uniform at the time, didn’t tell McDaniel and the other suspects that he was a police officer until after he’d been shot.

In a sentencing memorandum prosecutors reproduced a June 7, 2017 handwritten letter by McDaniel.

“I’m in jail because allegedly I shot a nigga in the head & left him brain dead, feel me?” he wrote to an unknown correspondent. “Then the next day I popped a OPD officer, feel me? But I had to do that, my life was on the line. WTF was I suppose to do just let him whip out & smoke me?”

Karsseboom ran into McDaniel and the other men at an apartment building parking area while he was investigating another East Oakland shooting that McDaniel was involved in.

However, McDaniel appears to have attempted to turn his life around while being incarcerated. His attorney mentioned that his client has newfound goals and included copies of McDaniel’s high school equivalency degree and certificates of biblical study.

In his own lengthy letter to the judge before his sentencing, McDaniel expressed remorse for his crimes.

“My time here on earth is only temporary, and, as I get older, I think more about what’s going to happen to my soul when I die,” he wrote. “Regardless of whatever happens or has happened, I want to right my wrongs, learn how to forgive, and live my life as pure as possible, because I want my soul to be at peace. I'll be 30 years old in less than 30 months, and before I came to jail I never thought I'd live to see 30.”