A 43-year-old Bronx man, Bruce Morris, a/k/a “G,” was sentenced Monday, Aug. 4,  to 27 years in prison by U.S. District Judge Jesse M. Furman in connection with the August 2016 murder of Jerome Jemison, 46, in The Bronx, as well as related narcotics and firearm offenses, federal prosecutors said.

 

U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Jay Clayton said Morris was convicted following a jury trial in January 2025 of conspiracy to distribute crack cocaine and heroin and of using, carrying, and brandishing a firearm in connection with that conspiracy. He said following an evidentiary hearing, Furman also found that Morris was responsible for the murder of Jemison. 

 

“In 2016, Bruce Morris murdered Jerome Jemison in the middle of the day on the landing of a public stairwell of an apartment building in the Bronx, a building that he terrorized for over a decade,” said Clayton. “Morris has now been held accountable for his heinous crimes.”  

 

According to public filings and court records, from at least 2012 through in or about June 2023, Morris led a drug racket that sold crack cocaine and heroin in the Hunts Point neighborhood of The Bronx. The court heard that the base for Morris’s operation was an apartment in the building where his family lived at 868 Faile Street in Hunts Point and the surrounding area, as well as, for a time, a vacant apartment in that same building. 

 

Prosecutors said Morris used guns, threats of violence, and acts of violence to maintain control of his drug trafficking business and the building and on one occasion, when the superintendent of the building confronted the conspirators about their use of the vacant apartment, he threatened the super with a gun.

 

They said on Aug. 11, 2016, during the middle of a summer day, on the third floor of 868 Faile Street, Morris shot Jemison (“Sal”) in the back of his head over a drug debt. 

 

In addition to his prison term, prosecutors said Morris, 43, of The Bronx was sentenced to five years of supervised release. 

 

Clayton praised what he described as the outstanding investigative work of the FBI and the NYPD. 

 

The case is being handled by the Narcotics Unit of the Office of U.S. Attorneys for the Southern District of New York. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Matthew Weinberg, Camille L. Fletcher, Jeffrey W. Coyle, Jackie Delligatti, and Marguerite B. Colson are leading the prosecution, with the assistance of Paralegal Specialist Jackie Fleury.