Burgess pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and was sentenced to 8 to 9 years in state prison.
SPRINGFIELD — James V. Smith told a Hampden Superior Court judge it has been very difficult for his family to move forward without his brother, Richard Wayne Dillon.
Smith was speaking to Judge Peter A. Velis last week as Cleveland Burgess, 32, pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter in Dillon’s fatal shooting in 1995.
The shooting happened on Halloween night 17 years ago in Indian Orchard, where Dillon, 30, lived with his mother.
Burgess was 16 years old at that time. He wasn’t charged with the murder until November. The case had been unsolved for all those years.
Velis sentenced Burgess to eight to nine years in state prison in the case prosecuted by Assistant District Attorney James M. Forsyth.
When Burgess was charged, Hampden District Attorney Mark G. Mastroianni said the indictment was the result of a series of statements made by Burgess to people “disclosing his (own) involvement” in Dillon’s death.
Mastroianni did not say to whom Burgess made statements, but he did say one was made while Burgess was incarcerated.
“One of those statements rose to the level of what is a confession,” Mastroianni said. Investigators took the statements attributed to Burgess and compared them with details of the killing, and it was determined there was cause to charge Burgess.
Burgess was serving a four- to six-year state prison sentence for a 2010 unarmed
robbery conviction for robbing a woman in Springfield when he was charged with Dillon’s killing.
Smith recalled being told his brother had been shot in the chest with a shotgun at close range.
He said he viewed his brother’s body and found “it had taken a brutal attack on it. I would later explain the condition of his body to his mother and other family members.”
He said, “Needless to say our hearts were heavy and our family had suffered a heavy loss.”
Smith said the family missed Richard’s “sense of humor, his smile and his contributions to this family and to the world we live in.”
Soon after Dillon was killed, about 75 people held a vigil in his memory on Rodney King Circle, where Dillon was shot.
Three men had been charged initially, but charges were later dropped against them.