Newburgh man sentenced to 25 years to life for murder case

On Tuesday, August 27, James Rich, 36, of Newburgh, was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison for killing a man with a broomstick, Orange County District Attorney David M. Hoovler announced.

On June 24, 2024, Rich was convicted in Orange County Court of all charges against him, including murder in the second degree and criminal possession of a controlled substance in the seventh degree in connection with the stabbing death of a man in a residence in Newburgh.

According to Hoovler’s report, on March 14, 2023, police responded to a call at a residence in the city of Newburgh that resulted in Rich being arrested and charged with possessing cocaine. After being released from that arrest, Rich returned to the residence and attacked a 76-year-old man who lived with Rich in the residence. During the attack, Rich reportedly “impaled the victim in the head with a metal broomstick which resulted in the man’s death,” per Hoovler’s report. Then over a 24-hour period, Rich was captured on surveillance video “discarding bags of bloody clothing bearing the victim’s DNA that were believed to have been worn by Rich during the killing.” On March 17, 2023, Rich was found by police hiding in a closet of a different apartment and the victim’s cell phone was recovered from the same area where Rich was hiding.

Rich was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison on the charge of murder in the second degree and 364 days on the misdemeanor charge of criminal possession of a controlled substance in the seventh degree, for having illegally possessed cocaine. The sentences have been merged.

District Attorney Hoovler thanked the City of Newburgh Police Department for their investigation and the New York State Police for their assistance.

“The community will be safer during the decades that this defendant is in prison,” said Hoovler. “The sheer brutality of this crime is staggering. The case was challenging from investigation through trial and the hard-won conviction is a testament to the dedicated work of the police and prosecutors who saw that justice was done. I offer my condolences to the victim’s family and friends and I hope that this lengthy sentence will give them a sense of closure. The prosecution of violent felonies, most importantly in those cases that result in a death, remains the cornerstone priority of my office and we will not cease in our pursuit of dangerous offenders.”

District Attorney Hoovler also praised assistant district attorneys Tanja Beemer and Nicholas Mangold who prosecuted the case.