As the killer stood before him, Judge Kenneth Walker couldn't stay silent.

"If I could I would take all the guns in America, put them on big barges and go dump them in the ocean," the judge told the defendant. "Nobody would have a gun. Not police, not security, not anybody. We should eliminate all of them. We could save 33,000 people a year if we didn't have guns in this country."

Marcell Lee Daniel Jr. had unleashed 30 bullets during an afternoon drive-by shooting of an innocent man on a North Portland sidewalk. The man, Andrew Coggins Jr., 24, died.

The judge kept going.

"Australia after a major shooting rounded up all the guns, and they haven't had near the death that we do here in this country," he said.

The judge was referring to tighter gun controls in Australia in response to a 1996 mass shooting by a lone gunman who killed 35. Australia responded by buying back or seizing a million existing firearms and making it more difficult to buy new ones. News reports marking the 20th anniversary of gun reforms state there have been no mass shootings -- defined as 5 or more people -- since.

"I just saw last night a statistic that 11,000 people in America are murdered each year and another 20,000 commit suicide with guns," Walker said, referring to figures from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"They are a scourge of this country and no one should have one as far as I'm concerned," he said. "There's no defense to guns. There's just absolutely no reason to have them. But it is a right of people in this country to own and possess them, and I will not say anything to affect that right."

Walker, a Multnomah County Circuit Court judge for nearly 10 years and a criminal defense attorney before that for 25 years, sentenced Daniel to 17 1/2 years in prison.

The dead man's mother, Connie Holmes, said she appreciated the judge's comments.

She and about a dozen others who were related to her son or knew him had filled the courtroom Monday, wearing T-shirts with Coggins' photo screen-printed on them. They gasped and sobbed as they spoke of their loss.

The shooting happened about 2:45 p.m. on June 30, 2014, as Coggins was standing in a grassy median in front of the New Columbia planned community at 4900 N. Fessenden St. talking to a friend next to a broken down Grand Marquis Mercury.

An unidentified driver pulled up and Daniel, a passenger, fired the barrage of 9 mm bullets. Two struck Coggins, including a fatal bullet that entered his back and traveled to his chest. Another man suffered a grazing wound.

No one else was hit, but bullets lodged in the nearby home of an 8-year-old boy. It was a warm summer day and children played in the streets and at McCoy Park, less than a block away.

Police at the time said the shooting was gang-related. But Daniel's defense attorney, Ernest Warren Jr., said it wasn't. Coggins' family said he wasn't involved in gangs.

Warren said Daniel and Coggins didn't know each other -- and Coggins wasn't the intended target.

Prosecutor Amanda Nadell declined to elaborate on Daniel's motive or target.

Judge Kenneth Walker talks about guns at Marcell Daniel's sentencing for killing Andrew Coggins 7 Gallery: Judge Kenneth Walker talks about guns at Marcell Daniel's sentencing for killing Andrew Coggins

A year passed before Daniel was indicted. By then, he was already in jail under accusations that he shot a 20-year-old man outside a North Portland bar in May 2015.

As part of the plea agreement, charges for the bar shooting were dismissed. In the killing of Coggins, Daniel pleaded guilty to first-degree manslaughter and attempted murder for the grazing wound to the other man.

Some of Coggins' relatives said they forgave Daniel.

"I really do hate you for taking him from me," Coggins' mother said during the sentencing hearing. "But I have to find somewhere in my heart to forgive you. Drew was in the wrong place at the wrong time. But it was really messed up, ... taking him from us like that."

A man who identified himself as Coggins' older brother stood up and spoke directly to Daniel: "I'd like you to apologize to my mom."

Daniel replied: "I'm sorry for your loss."

The apology was met with head shakes from some of Coggins' family, who wanted Daniel to take direct responsibility for the killing.

One of them uttered aloud what they thought would have been a more appropriate apology: "Sorry for your reckless actions, to kill an innocent person."

Family members said that at the time of the killing, Coggins was working to start a clothing company and rebuild his life after serving more than four years in prison for stabbing a relative in the forearm in 2009 when he was 19. Family members this week said they thought Coggins was trying to protect them during the stabbing.

Coggins was one of 25 people who were killed through homicidal gun violence in Portland in 2015.

Walker, the judge, said he made his comments because it's frustrating to see all the deaths caused by gun violence.

Warren, the defense attorney and a former law partner of Walker's, said he thought the judge's comments in court were "remarkable." Warren said he's has handled about five similar gun-violence cases each year for the past quarter-century.

"It's very sad," he said.

-- Aimee Green

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