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As a violent offender, 32-year-old Damion Shonte Sampson must serve at least 85 percent of his sentence — roughly 14 years and 10 months — before he’ll be eligible for parole, under the term meted out by Superior Court Judge James Guida.
Guida initially sentenced Sampson to 20 years earlier today, but defense attorney Michael DeBliss showed the judge his client’s signed plea agreement, which included the lesser sentence.
“You just got two and a half years of your life back,” the judge told Sampson. “I hope you use it well.”
Sampson also must register for life as a Megan’s Law offender and serve his time in state prison — and not the Avenel Diagnostic and Treatment Center for sex offenders.
The victims include two women in Paterson, as well as a 29-year-old woman who was robbed at knifepoint at a South Hackensack motel on Sept. 28, 2010.
Sampson already had more than a decade’s worth of arrests and convictions at the time for offenses including aggravated assault and weapons possession when he arranged to meet the woman at the motel.
He was free on $35,000 bail at the time, following an arrest five months earlier on charges of simple assault, threatening to kill, resisting arrest, eluding, hindering and obstruction.
Prosecutors said Sampson threatened the woman with a knife and forced her into sex. He then “stole the victim’s cellular telephone, bank cards, driver’s license and cash,” Bergen County Prosecutor John L. Molinellli said.
Detectives went straight to his home and arrested him after the woman called police. There, Molinelli said, they found her phone, cards and license.
Sampson, who is single and unemployed, had been held on $800,000 bail since then in the Bergen County Jail.
STORY, CLIFFVIEW PILOT PHOTOS: Mary K. Miraglia
Damion Shonte Sampson, left, Superior Court Judge James J. Guida, right
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