A 32-year-old man has been sentenced to life without parole in the brazen 2017 killing of a trial witness outside the Montgomery County Courthouse

Josephus Boone was convicted last week in the in the shooting death of 31-year-old Kelvin Cooley, Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall announced Tuesday.

Cooley was killed shortly after he testified against Boone’s brother, Jacquees Boone, who was on trial for the attempted murder of Cooley’s brother.

A jury on Thursday convicted Boone of capital murder and discharging a firearm into an occupied building following an eight-day trial.

Circuit Judge Brooke Reid sentenced Boone based on the jury’s verdict to impose a life without parole sentence, Marshall said.

The shooting happened at 4:33 p.m. Monday, Oct. 23, 2017, in the 300 block of Lawrence Street, just outside the Montgomery County Courthouse.

Kelvin Cooley was pronounced dead at 3:45 a.m. Tuesday at Baptist Medical South.

Former Montgomery County District Attorney Daryl Bailey told Al.com at the time that following Kelvin Cooley’s testimony, two armed investigators walked Kelvin Cooley to his car parked outside the courthouse. Cooley got into his vehicle, pulled off and moments later the gunfire erupted.

“The investigators actually witnessed it,’’ Bailey said at the time. “As we have learned in the city and throughout the country, there are people who just don’t care. It’s pure evil, and it’s everywhere.”

Trial testimony showed that Boone fired 17 shots from his vehicle at Cooley.

Two of those 17 shots struck First Baptist Church, with one of them going through a window, into a room, and through a hallway before being lodged in a door frame inside the church

Church staff members were in the building at the time of the shooting, but not injured.

“Justice was served today,” Marshall said Tuesday. “Josephus Boone murdered Kelvin Cooley in broad daylight, endangering numerous citizens in downtown Montgomery while attempting to intimidate and undermine our very system of justice.”

“His violent disregard for life extended beyond his intended victim, as he recklessly fired into the historic First Baptist Church, placing even more lives at risk,’’ Marshall said. “Boone will now serve the rest of his life in prison for his violent acts.”

Cooley’s shooting death was the latest act of violence in a series of disputes between the Cooley and Boone families that went back years, court records show, in a feud that ultimately left one person from each family paralyzed by gunfire and then Kelvin Cooley dead.

On March 29, 2014, according to court records, Jacquees Boone, now 27, shot Alondre Cooley, who was Kevin Cooley’s brother. In that case, police say Alondre Cooley was walking down the street when Jacquees Boone drove up next to him in a vehicle and fired, striking Cooley in the face and leaving him paralyzed. Alondre Cooley had no criminal record, but authorities have said he was targeted because of some of his family members.

Just two days after that shooting, records show, Kelvin Cooley shot Jacquees Boone — apparently in retaliation for his brother’s shooting. Records show Kelvin Cooley fired into a 2004 Ford, striking Jacquees Boone in the back. As a result, Jacquees Boone was also paralyzed.

Jacquees Boone was convicted of attempted murder in February 2015 and sentenced to life in prison under the state’s habitual offender laws, but the Alabama Supreme Court in 2016 reversed the court’s judgement and the defendant’s new trial began this week.

The following month – in March 2015 – Kelvin Cooley pleaded guilty to first-degree assault in the wounding of Jacquees Boone. He was sentenced to 9 1/2 years in prison with two years to serve followed by probation.