UPPER MARLBORO – In a cool, somber courtroom Friday afternoon, a tearful Daniel Murray apologized for the actions that led to the death of fellow student Michael Scrocca.
“I never in my wildest dreams imagined what I did would hurt anyone,” said Murray, of Hurlock. “I’m just sorry.”
There was never any evidence to suggest that Murray knew Scrocca, who was from Branchburg, N.J. But during the nearly nine months Murray was jailed between his arrest and his January guilty plea, there was never any indication he regretted what he had done, either. Instead, prosecutors said in interviews that Murray seemed more intent on taking his defense into his own hands to avoid prison.
For Murray, though, that strategy only muddled what Judge Thomas P. Smith called the most skillfully lawyered case he has seen in his 40-year career. During several hearings, prosecutors not only thoroughly documented Murray’s actions on the night of April 30, 2005, the night Scrocca died, but they also painstakingly laid out Murray’s year-long silence after the fire, his subsequent confession, a later denial of that confession and a betrayal by his cellmates that eventually solidified the state’s case.
Throughout all of it, including Murray’s brief apology at the end of Friday’s sentencing, it appeared the man prosecutors called “a psychopath” never quite made the right decision.
“As I watched the defendent con, deny, manipulate, and attempt to deceive,” Smith said just after Murray gave his statement, “I can’t perceive that the remorse isn’t for anything other than being caught. I have not seen until 30 seconds ago any remorse.”
Lead prosecutor John Maloney said it was this lack of remorse during the investigation that ultimately played a role in the judge’s sentence. But Murray’s actions in jail – including trying to get two cellmates’ girlfriends to perjure themselves and say a black man set the blaze – astonished investigators, especially when Murray presented the plot to a second cellmate after getting caught the first time.
“If he would have come forward earlier, he would have got a lesser sentence. There’s no doubt about that,” Maloney said.”There’s no doubt he dug his hole deeper. It was going to be a difficult case with no eyewitnesses or [hard evidence] tying him to it. It would have been a very challenging case. He hurt himself.”
Without Murray’s blunders, prosecutors would have had to work with a pile of circumstantial evidence and accusations of people who did not witness the crime.
Before Murray’s arrest, the prosecution had only an FBI report showing a gas can was used at the house, a theft report filed by a neighbor who said a gas can was stolen, and a handful of statements, one which claimed they heard someone say “That’s what you get for f—ing with me” as the house was burning, according to statements read during court proceedings.
Although Murray wasn’t arrested for more than a year after the crime, an anonymous phone call to police eventually exposed Murray’s role. It came from someone, who by all accounts, was told by a friend of Murray who knew he had been involved with the fire.
Students’ complacency – at least six friends and acquaintances of Murray apparently knew of his involvement and never told authorities – disturbed the judge more than the incident itself, he said. And even after Murray was arrested, he refused to confess for hours during questioning.
He finally broke down and admitted wrongdoing, but later said, under oath, that the confession was coerced and was a lie, something Smith said on Friday amounted to perjury.
Maloney said the turning point in the prosecution came when Murray was caught on tape the second time plotting with a cellmate to fabricate evidence aimed at muddying the case.
“It was the second person coming forward with the alibi that really put the nail in the coffin for him,” Maloney said, pointing out that Murray’s attorneys approached him about a plea agreement shortly after they heard the second tape. Even with all Murray’s mistakes, Maloney told the court it was only by chance he escaped spending life in prison, or even the death penalty.
“Mr. Murray would have been the poster child for the death penalty if by luck those [eight] people didn’t get out of that house,” Maloney said in court. “He was able to live with that for an entire year.”
The little boy who his family described as a cub scout and a dedicated swimmer, the boy who played the Tin Man in a school play of The Wizard of Oz, did not seem to be the same Murray who sat silently in shackles and an orange prison jumpsuit on Friday afternoon.
“The events of that night were so out of character for Dan,” said Jim Murray, Daniel’s father. “I can’t imagine the pain and suffering caused by my broken family.”
Presiding over a courtroom full of police, lawyers, friends of Scrocca and two families grieving over the fate of their sons, Smith noted the losses at the sentencing cut particularly deep.
“I look at two sets of parents seated on two sides of a courtroom who have lost a son,” judge Smith said. “And I think about what might have been in this case on both sides.”
Contact reporter Owen Praskievicz at praskieviczdbk@gmail.com.
