BATON ROUGE - District Attorney Hillar Moore said that a plea deal the prosecutors entered with a man convicted of killing a father in his own home in 2021 was made because he was almost certain jurors wouldn't have convicted him. 

Nicholas Mcquirter was found guilty in the killing of Dezmon Hamilton, whose family members expressed outrage that Mcquirter's charges were reduced to negligent homicide from the second-degree murder charge he was arrested on. 

"The issue is that we run the risk of going to trial where we know with almost a certainty that we're going to lose the trial," Moore said.

Mcquirter, who was 17 at the time, was arrested after he climbed into Hamilton's home to see his 14-year-old daughter. The two exchanged gunfire, and Hamilton was shot and killed. Officials say it is still unclear who shot first.

"It was just the evidence was there were no witnesses to the actual shooting to determine who shot first who was the aggressor and looking at all the ballistics and doing all the test that we could do there was no video that was put into evidence that to our knowledge, there was no way we could tell who shot first," the DA said.

Mcquirter is now out on five-year supervised probation, with a curfew of 8 p.m. to 7 a.m. Hamilton's family says this sentencing was not enough. 

Family told WBRZ that when discussing the plea deal with Moore and even knowing that they might not have gotten a guilty verdict with a jury, they still wanted to go to trial.

Moore says the plea deal was necessary to ensure some form of justice.

"We wanted to give them more than what we could and what they deserve," Moore said. "However, based on the facts and the law, and what we perceived any jury or judge would do in this case, we felt this was the most prudent thing to do for the interest of public safety."