In a hearing on July 17, DC Superior Court Judge Neal Kravitz corrected an impermissible sentence he accidentally imposed for a fatal shooting defendant, but declined to reduce his overall prison time.
JD Wheeler, 27, was sentenced on Dec. 19, 2025 to five years in prison for voluntary manslaughter. The charge stems from a Nov. 24, 2021 incident on the 2300 block of Chester Street, SE, when Wheeler accidentally shot his two-year-old son Legend Wheeler in the face, killing him.
In a separate case, Wheeler was sentenced on the same date to two years in prison for a carrying a pistol without a license offense that occurred on Nov. 27, 2024 on the 3300 block of Fort Dupont Drive, SE. Wheeler was on release in the murder case when the offense occurred.
As part of Wheeler’s plea deal, parties agreed to a sentence between four-and-10 years in prison for the murder and one year for the possession case. Both sides agreed that the counts would run consecutive to each other. The agreement was under rule 11c1C, which requires the judge to sentence within the agreement, or reject the deal.
Without an 11c1C, prosecutors can agree to recommend a certain sentence, but they cannot guarantee what sentence the judge will impose.
At Wheeler’s sentencing on Dec. 19, 2025, Judge Kravitz determined that seven total years was an appropriate sentence for the two charges. However, instead of sentencing Wheeler to seven years in prison for manslaughter and one concurrent year for carrying a pistol, Judge Kravitz sentenced Wheeler to the aforementioned sentence.
Because the plea deal guaranteed Wheeler serve one year in prison for carrying a pistol, Judge Kravitz’s sentence on that charge was impermissible under the plea deal. Sylvia Smith and Erin Griffard, Wheeler’s attorneys, caught the mistake about four months later, and filed a motion to reduce the two-year carrying a pistol sentence to one year. This would reduce Wheeler’s total sentence to six years.
Smith and Griffard opposed Judge Kravitz increasing Wheeler’s sentence for manslaughter and maintaining the original seven year sentence, saying that doing so would violate the double jeopardy clause of the Fifth Amendment.
It protects defendants from receiving more than one sentence for the same offense, in effect being penalized for the same time twice. Because rectifying the sentencing error would require Judge Kravitz to sentence Wheeler a second time, Smith and Griffard argued that Wheeler’s sentence could not be increased.
Judge Kravitz granted Smith and Griffard’s motion to reduce Wheeler’s firearm sentence to one year in prison, but he denied their motion to leave his manslaughter sentence unchanged.
Judge Kravitz used the sentencing packaging doctrine for legal justification in increasing Wheeler’s manslaughter sentence. The doctrine allows a judge to modify related sentences in order to maintain the original total sentence.
He cited Ward v. United States as precedent, where a court raised a defendant’s sentence to comply with an 11c1C plea, while still maintaining a 108-month total sentence. The DC Court of Appeals determined that the actions of the original judge were appropriate because the amended sentence was still consistent with the court’s overall sentencing plan.
Smith argued that in Ward v. United States, the 11c1C plea mandated that the defendant serve 108 total months in prison, so the court would have still violated the 11c1C terms had they not maintained the original total sentence. However, in Wheeler’s case, a five-year sentence instead of a seven-year sentence still fell within the sentence range required by the 11c1C agreement.
Judge Kravitz acknowledged Smith’s argument, but maintained his ruling and invited the defense to either file a motion to reconsider or appeal his decision.
No further hearings were scheduled in this matter.
