Man Sentenced for Killing Father, a Police Officer

Piscataway, NJ - A Piscataway man was sentenced Thursday to 24 years in prison for shooting and killing his own father, a 26-year veteran of the township police department and member of the Piscataway Board of Education.

John Mahoney, 27, was convicted on March 12 of last year for the crime, in which he killed his father, Jerry Mahoney, 49, and then shot himself in the arm, saying an intruder broke into the home.

Mahoney later told police he killed his father, but said it was an accident. At the trial, he admitted to purposely shooting and killing his father, but claimed he acted in self-defense.

The prosecution argued that Mahoney had actually planned the homicide for some time, and had mentioned to friends that he wanted to hire a hit man. Prosecutors said he shot his father three times on the morning of December 27, 2007, while the older man was sleeping in a recliner in their home.

But the son told the jury his father had physically and verbally abused him for years. He said his father drank heavily, and once hit him with a beer bottle, breaking it, and then sliced his arm with the broken glass. He said his father punched him, slapped him, pistol-whipped him and once pulled the trigger of an unloaded gun that was pointed at him. The father called John "a fat, lazy, slob" for getting bad grades and quitting the football team, John said. A shocking tape that Mahoney had secretly recorded was played during the trial that captured his father berating him.

"Why didn't you go to the police?" William Fetky, his attorney asked during trial, reports NJ.com.

"He was the police," Mahoney said.

Prosecutors argued he only killed his old man for money he would inherit.

A jury deliberated for three days before finding Mahoney guilty of aggravated manslaughter, but not the most serious charge of murder, for which he was acquitted.

He has already spent a little more than eight years in custody since his arrest. He must serve 85 percent of 20 years in prison before he can be eligible for parole.

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