A 47-year-old man who was convicted of the 1979 murder of a Jamaica Plain man as he sat in his vehicle, will be remitted to federal authorities to face deportation proceedings, Suffolk County District Attorney Daniel F. Conley announced.

After three days of testimony and approximately three hours of deliberations, a Superior Court jury on Tuesday found RICHARD FRANKLIN (D.O.B. 11/20/61) guilty of manslaughter and unlawful possession of a firearm for the May 13, 1979, murder of 30-year-old Gregory McDavid.

At a sentencing hearing this afternoon, Superior Court Judge Judith Fabricant listened as McDavid’s daughter – who was eight-years-old when her father was killed – described a childhood without her father.

“I would like to begin today by telling you all about my father: All his likes and dislikes, all his hopes and dreams, all the many memorable times we shared,” Dawn McDavid-Bauman said. “But I can’t. I can’t because, somehow, in my mind, my life mostly begins the day he was killed.”

“It seems like a very unfair trick for my mind to play, but almost all the happy times we must have shared before that day seem to be beyond my reach,” she continued. “However, I can still remember the day he was killed like it was yesterday.”

“Mr. Franklin, a complete stranger to my family, taught us a lesson that day back in 1979,” she said, through tears. “Fear is what you taught us. Fear of life, because of its lack of stability and the sadness it can hold; fear of death, because we know how suddenly and unexpectedly it can enter your life. And, as strange as it may sound, fear of happiness.”

During the trial, Assistant District Attorney Ian Polumbaum introduced evidence and testimony proving that the then 17-year-old Franklin obtained a gun with a plan to rob McDavid. When Franklin saw McDavid leaning rightward inside the car, he shot McDavid instead.

Mortally wounded, McDavid staggered from the vehicle, climbed a nearby set of stairs, and collapsed in an apartment at 33 Greenbrier St. in Dorchester. He was later pronounced dead of his injuries.

The case went unsolved for more than a decade until Franklin walked unbidden into the office of a community service officer at his Brockton housing development in 1995 and admitted his role in the shooting.

In three separate post-Miranda statements to the community service officer, a Brockton Police detective, and finally members of the Boston Police Homicide Unit, Franklin admitted to approaching McDavid’s car and firing a single shot through the closed driver’s side window in the course of an attempted robbery.

In the course of a tape-recorded statement, Franklin revealed detailed knowledge of McDavid’s homicide and, ultimately, was taken into custody. In 1998, however, he was deemed not competent to stand trial and was committed to a secure psychiatric facility until 2005, when medical professionals deemed him competent to stand trial.

In his sentencing recommendation, Polumbaum told Judge Fabricant that due to the existing laws at the time that the crime was committed, the defendant was eligible for “good time” deductions for the time he spent incarcerated at the state psychiatric facility, meaning that he had already served the maximum allowable sentence for both crimes under state law.

Recognizing that Franklin could not be ordered to serve additional prison time, Polumbaum recommended that Judge Fabricant sentence Franklin to a sentence of 18-to-20-years in prison for the manslaughter conviction, and a split sentence for the firearm charge, with one year to serve and the balance suspended for up to five years, deemed served.

Polumbaum noted that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had secured a warrant for Franklin, and that he would next be remitted to the agency’s custody in order to begin deportation proceedings to send the defendant back to his native Jamaica.

Polumbaum further requested that should Franklin be released from federal custody at any point for any reason, that he immediately be placed under supervised probation and be required to notify the Probation Department of his release within 24 hours by telephone, and report in person to probation within a week.

Judge Fabricant imposed a 15-to-20-year sentence for the manslaughter charge and adopted the Commonwealth’s recommendation for the firearm charge, deeming both sentences served. Because the crime was committed before a change in the law in 1994, a split sentence was allowed on the firearm charge, meaning that even though Franklin was deemed to have served one year of that sentence, a suspended sentence of 4 ½ -to-five-years could still be imposed. Judge Fabricant ordered that if Franklin is released from federal custody, he would be required to report to the probation department in person by the following business day, and would need to submit to a mental health evaluation and any recommended treatment.

Franklin was represented by attorney James Coviello.