WASHINGTON – Two D.C. men each have been sentenced to more than 100 years in prison after murdering three others in a hail of gunfire that helped lead to controversial police checkpoints in the nation’s capital.

William McCorkle and Andre Clinkscale Jr., both 26 and from D.C., were found guilty in October of first-degree murder while armed with aggravating circumstances — as well as related firearms offenses — in the 2008 shootings of Duane Hough, Anthony Mincey and Johnny Jeter in the District’s Trinidad neighborhood.

D.C. Superior Court Judge Lynn Leibovitz on Friday sentenced McCorkle — who also was found guilty on charges of obstruction of justice and contempt — to 144 years in prison. Clinkscale received a 105-year prison term.

The murders occurred on a particularly deadly night in the District in which seven people were killed. The violence helped prompt the Metropolitan Police Department to set up checkpoints in the Trinidad neighborhood — a tactic later struck down and deemed unconstitutional by a federal appeals court.

Prosecutors say McCorkle and the 37-year-old Hough got in an argument outside a BP gas station at Florida Avenue and Holbrook Street in Northeast in the early morning hours of May 31, 2008. McCorkle and Clinkscale both pulled handguns and fired at Hough, then shot Jeter, 24, as he tried to drive away. The two then shot Mincey, 35, as he tried to escape by running into an alley.

Hough was shot 17 times, and Ronald C. Machen, U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, says the pair inflicted 37 gunshot wounds total on the three victims.

In April, McCorkle was acquitted of charges including conspiracy and assault with intent to kill related to events surrounding the death of 13-year-old Alonzo Robinson in the Trinidad neighborhood — a shooting that helped prompt the second implementation of the police checkpoints in the area. McCorkle was not implicated or charged in Robinson’s death.

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