A trio of Brooklyn thugs who conspired to kill a witness were each hit with 40 years-to-life behind bars Monday as the judge slammed them for an “attack on our judicial system.”
Terell Viera, 24, was locked up on Rikers Island facing murder charges in January 2011 when he told his brother Shamar Viera, 26, and pal Roger Freeman, 28, to kill a witness set to testify against him.
Shamar Viera and Freeman lured the witness to the roof of a Brooklyn building the night before Terell Viera’s murder trial and shot him – but the witness lived.
All three men were convicted on attempted murder and conspiracy raps on Feb. 27.
“This was an attempted murder of a witness who testified against his brother. It’s an attack on our judicial system,” Judge Albert Tomei said Monday in Brooklyn Supreme Court.
“Killing witnesses or trying to kill witnesses has no place in our society. I hope the message goes out.”
The 40-year sentence Tomei handed down greatly exceeds even the 25 years to life sentence most often meted out for murder.
None of the three men spoke to express remorse before they were sentenced and none had any family or friends in court to support them.
“The defendant’s actions of trying to silence a witness are despicable,” prosecutor Melissa Carvajal wrote of Terell Viera in court papers.
“His attempts to kill a witness would have had a devastating effect not only on this trial but also to our system of justice as a whole.”
Although the trial was delayed while the shot witness recuperated for a month,Terell Viera, was convicted in 2011 of manslaughter for shooting dead Elsmaker Iverson, 26, after an argument in Coney Island on Nov. 2, 2008.
Despite the near-deadly intimidation, the witness — whose name is being witheld by The Post — took the stand in Terell’s murder trial and then faced all three men in the 2014 attempted murder and witness intimidation trial.