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Man Who Helped Kill Officer Doesn't Want Sentence Cut

Tribune file photo (May 1997)

For four years, the family of Christopher Horner did not know who killed him. Then Christopher Gamble came forward.

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By ELAINE SILVESTRINI | The Tampa Tribune

Published: November 14, 2008

Updated: 11/14/2008 12:02 pm

TAMPA - The prosecutor and the victim's family want a judge to reduce the sentence of a man who participated in the slaying of a Haines City police officer nearly 11 years ago.

But Christopher Gamble told a judge he deserves to spend the rest of his life behind bars for what he did.

Gamble's lawyer said he's never seen anything like it.

Gamble should be rewarded, say prosecutors and the family of slain Officer Christopher Todd Horner, because without his testimony, the slaying would never have been solved.

Assistant U.S. Attorney James Muench asked a judge to change Gamble's sentence from life plus 107 years in federal prison to 24 years behind bars.

In support of his request, Muench read a letter to the court from Horner's daughter Jennifer, who was 9 years old when her father was killed.

"For 10 years I blamed myself," Jennifer Horner wrote. "I blamed myself because I didn't know who else to blame."

Gamble changed all that.

"After reading Christopher Gamble's testimony, I realized my father's life made a difference for him," she wrote. "I do not feel that there will ever be closure because nothing can bring my father back, but Chris Gamble gave my family and I the second best thing – the truth. … "Chris, John 8:32 says, 'The truth shall set you free.' That quote is applicable to my life 100 percent, and I hope through this resentencing, it will be applicable to yours as well."

Gamble's lawyer, public defender Adam Allen, said he read a letter Gamble wrote to him four years ago, talking about how he cooperated because he was haunted by nightmares about what happened. He wanted to make things right, he said. He wishes he had killed Charles Fowler, the gunman, instead of letting Fowler kill Horner.

Allen said Gamble tried to interrupt him when he told U.S. District Judge James Moody he wanted the judge to grant the prosecutor's motion and reduce Gamble's sentence.

Then Gamble spoke. He didn't want his sentence changed, he said. He deserves to spend the rest of his life in prison. All he wants is for the remaining suspect to be brought to justice and have to face the victim's family.

"I didn't know he was going to do that," Allen said. "But knowing Chris Gamble, it doesn't surprise me. This whole thing, from Day One, has not been about getting out of jail for Chris. … I think he was very much moved by the words of Officer Horner's daughter, and that meant more to him than being out of jail."

Moody said prosecutors often want more severe sentences and defendants want less time behind bars. This time, the prosecution and the defendant again disagreed.

But, the judge said, just as he often does when the situation is reversed, he will ignore the defendant and do what's right.

The judge, however, reserved decision to give the lawyers time to talk about what to do next.

Horner was shot to death in a cemetery. He was the only officer from Haines City to be killed in the line of duty.

For four years, the 1998 death of the rookie police officer went unsolved, with some suspecting he might have committed suicide. Then, in 2002, Gamble came forward and admitted his role, telling authorities about how he and four friends jumped Gamble after the officer came across them planning a bank robbery.

Authorities asked Gamble to meet face to face with his accomplices to try to get them to admit what they did. When none of them confessed, Gamble testified against them in court. Fowler, Andre T. Paige and Robert Winston were convicted at separate trials. A fifth man connected to the slaying has not been charged.

Gamble was called a liar and a snitch. But he kept testifying, and juries kept agreeing with him.

"If not for Gamble's testimony, three men involved in the execution of Officer Horner would have escaped prosecution and Officer Horner's children would have grown up wondering whether their father had taken his own life," Muench wrote in his motion to reduce Gamble's sentence. "Without Gamble, the government had nothing."

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