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Race-fueled murder with Jeep brings life sentence with 28-year minimum for Russell Courtier
A white man who murdered an African American teenager out of racial hatred on a Gresham street was sentenced Tuesday to life in prison with a minimum of 28 years before he’s eligible for release.
Russell Orlando Courtier, 40, also must serve that prison time on top of a four-year term he previously received for a 2015 bar attack.
Courtier had hoped for a slightly shorter sentence -- life with a minimum of 25 years -- for killing 19-year-old Larnell Bruce Jr. by running into him with a Jeep after the two got into a fistfight outside a 7-Eleven in August 2016. A jury found him guilty in March.
The prosecution isn’t sure what prompted the fight, but said Courtier was a member of a white supremacist prison gang and was wearing the gang’s logo on his baseball cap and had it tattooed on one of his legs when he encountered Bruce outside the convenience store.
A moment later, surveillance video captured Bruce sprinting down a nearby street and then a sidewalk in a desperate attempt to get away from Courtier and the Jeep.
Prosecutor David Hannon told Multnomah County Circuit Judge Jerry Hodson that Courtier is “violent” and “unapologetic" for being a member of the European Kindred gang.
The judge’s sentencing decision capped an emotional hearing as Bruce’s biological mother, father and stepmother spoke.
“You allowed the devil to misguide you and take the life of such a beautiful young spirit,” said Christina Mines, Bruce’s biological mother. “...You took that life from us.”
She continued: “Why? Can you tell me why?”
Courtier’s eyes turned red and began to tear up as he listened.
When given an opportunity by the judge, Courtier declined to make any statements. His lawyers, John Robb and Kevin Sali, said they’d advised him not to speak.
After the hearing, Bruce’s stepmother, Natasha Bruce, said Courtier’s tears meant nothing to her, and some other family members agreed.
“I feel like a lot of that’s for camera: A person who does what he did doesn’t to me seem to have any empathy or remorse," said Natasha Bruce, who raised her stepson since he was in diapers.
She said the length of Courtier’s sentence at least is “some type of relief for us and whoever else may have to deal with this man again.”
Larnell Bruce Sr. said the jury’s verdict restored his faith in society -- that even during these racially tumultuous times, jurors could clearly see Courtier for what he is. In court, the elder Bruce told Courtier that he hopes he spends his time in prison thinking about whether he wants his own son, who is 8, to grow up in a world with white supremacy.
“That ideology that you have is not good for anybody,” Bruce Sr. said
After an eight-day trial, jurors found Courtier guilty of murder, hit-and-run driving and second-degree intimidation, a hate crime under Oregon law.
The decision appeared to mark Oregon’s first hate crime murder conviction in three decades. Prosecutors and a national expert on hate groups said the last time a defendant was convicted of a racially fueled murder in the state was in 1989, after Ethiopian immigrant Mulugeta Seraw was bludgeoned to death by a group of skinheads with a baseball bat on a Southeast Portland street.
In the middle of Courtier’s trial, his girlfriend at the time of Bruce’s killing pleaded guilty to first-degree manslaughter in the case. Colleen Hunt was sitting in the passenger seat of the Jeep, and witnesses said they heard her yell to Courtier: “Get him, baby!” and “Run him over!”
In a separate hearing later Tuesday, Hunt was sentenced to 10 years in prison. She wrote a letter of apology, which was shared with the judge and the prosecutor. The letter is expected to be made publicly available through her court file, but hasn’t been yet.
Hannon, the prosecutor, said his office agreed to the decade-long sentence for Hunt after finding no evidence that she shared the racial animus that Courtier harbors. Hannon said his office also first consulted Bruce’s family.
Stephine Pratt, Bruce’s sister-in-law, encouraging Hunt to change.
“I hope that you see that the path you chose to take in the past doesn’t have to be the path you take in the future,” Pratt said. Hunt looked at Pratt and nodded as her lower lip quivered.
Hunt declined to make any statements.
Jason Steen, her defense attorney, said Hunt has been subjected to 2 1/2 years of “public scorn, part of that being unfair" because people assumed she was the “exact same” as Courtier.
“She has certainly been thinking about the mistakes that she has made,” Steen said. “I know from her words that she really does get it. ... She’s definitely a different person today than when she came in.”
After Courtier’s sentencing, Bruce’s family and friends gathered across the street from the Multnomah County Courthouse and released green helium balloons into the air, to symbolize the organs Bruce donated. His heart, liver, lungs and kidneys saved the lives of five people, from their 30s into their 60s, his family said.
His family also has started a nonprofit organization -- Love and Live #LarnellBruce Foundation -- to help victims of hate crimes and their families get through the enormous anger and loss that results from such crimes.
