A Los Angeles County Superior Court judge sentenced a man to life in prison without the possibility of parole for a 2001 gang shooting that killed a Compton father and his 2-year-old daughter as they tried to flee gunfire on a front porch. Jahon Terez Smith, now 50, was convicted in August of two counts of first-degree murder and three counts of attempted murder, more than two decades after the killings went cold.
Judge Kelvin D. Filer handed down the sentence Tuesday, according to mynewsla.com, closing out a case that began on Aug. 8, 2001, when Stephen Murphy and his daughter, Kali, were killed by gunfire in Compton. Sources differ on Stephen Murphy's exact age at the time — mynewsla.com reported he was 25, while KTLA reported he was 24. Kali Murphy was 2 years old.
A Father's Desperate Attempt to Save His Daughter
Murphy tried to carry Kali to safety when the gunfire erupted, but both were shot, the outlet's report states. Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan J. Hochman said Murphy tried to shield his daughter from the gunshots, according to KTLA. Authorities say Stephen and Kali Murphy were caught in crossfire from passing cars while scrambling for safety on the grandmother's front porch.
Prosecutors say Smith and an unidentified passenger drove through the 13100 block of South Willowbrook Avenue intending to kill rival gang members, firing guns from their car as they drove down the street, per KTLA. The outlet reports that, according to the district attorney's office, it was the unidentified passenger — not Smith — who fired the bullet that killed Stephen and Kali Murphy. Authorities say Smith also tried to kill three other people that evening, shooting two of them, who survived.
DNA Technology Reopens a Decades-Old Case
Deputy District Attorney Paul Thompson told the court that the defendant drove with an unidentified accomplice into rival gang territory and that both opened fire at different points, per the mynewsla.com report. Prosecutors said DNA testing tied Smith to the gun used in the shootings. The Murphy killings were part of a string of related shootings that night spanning several blocks of Compton and Willowbrook, according to KTLA, and WWMT reported the shooting was one of five that took place in the neighborhood within five minutes.
At the request of family members, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department reviewed and reactivated the case in 2019. LASD Lt. Hugo Reynaga said the decision was primarily made from advancements in DNA technology that were not available back in 2001, per KTLA. Smith was arrested on Oct. 30, 2023, by the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, the mynewsla.com report states.
First Trial Deadlocked Before Conviction
Getting to a conviction took two trials. The first jury deadlocked 11-1, with the majority favoring guilt, in October 2025, before a second jury found Smith guilty on Aug. 14 and found a multiple-murders special-circumstances allegation true. Hochman said law enforcement and prosecutors persisted in solving a decades-old double murder, per KTLA's reporting.
Smith's attorney argued at sentencing that his client was not the actual killer and that the gunman responsible had not been caught, according to the mynewsla.com account. The Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office has said it has no information regarding the unidentified shooter, and it remains unclear whether that person has ever been identified or arrested.
