Prosecutors Play Hardball With Suspect in Murder of Gay Man

Manhattan prosecutors are sticking it hard to the ex-convict accused of murdering a gay man in the West Village last year.

The New York Post reports that 33-year-old Elliot Morales has no chance of a plea bargain.

"I can assure you there is not now or will there ever be an offer made to this gentleman regarding this case," said Assistant District Attorney Joan Iluzzi-Orbon on July 30 at a Manhattan Supreme Court hearing.

The suspect is on his third court-appointed attorney since his May 2013 arrest, saying that the lawyers were unable to do their job. He pled not guilty by reason of insanity in July 2013, as reported by Huffington Post. He is being held on Rikers Island without bail.

Morales has been charged with murder as a hate crime for shouting "Look at these faggots!" before shooting 32-year-old Mark Carson to death in Greenwich Village. The suspect and two others encountered Carson and a friend several minutes earlier, one of whom asked, "What are you, gay wrestlers?" Morales then followed the men, repeating anti-gay slurs.

EDGE reported in June 2013 that Morales had been walking through Greenwich Village, the birthplace of the gay liberation movement, just after midnight on May 18 intimidating people, asking if they "want to die here" before shooting Carson point-blank in the face, killing him.

Morales was arrested a few blocks away, and charged with murder as a hate crime, in addition to criminal possession of a weapon and menacing.

"Yeah, I shot him in the head," Morales reportedly told the New York Post, while "laughing on the ground" when cops were handcuffing him in May 2013.

The murder, which came on the heels of several other violent hate crimes that year, mobilized New York City's LGBT community, who gathered on May 20 on the steps of The Center to protest the violence. Thousands of participants marched to the site of the shooting on Sixth Avenue.