Silver Spring Man Pleads Guilty To 2022 Murder On Steps of DC Church

SILVER SPRING, MD — A Silver Spring man pleaded guilty to second degree murder in the May 2022 fatal shooting of a Northern Virginia man in Washington, D.C., according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia.

D.C. Superior Court Judge Robert Okun scheduled a sentencing hearing for May 31 for James Jackson, 30, who faces a sentencing range of 19 to 23 years in prison.

Jackson pleaded guilty on Wednesday to second degree murder while armed for the fatal shooting of Christian Monje, 29, of Fairfax County.

At about 4:30 a.m. on May 30, 2022, D.C. police officers responded to the 1700 block of Rhode Island Ave. NW, in response to the sounds of gunshots. Officers found Monje on the steps of St. Matthew’s Cathedral, suffering from a gunshot wound to the head, according to the government’s evidence. He was taken to a hospital and died from his injuries on June 16, 2022.

Detectives recovered surveillance footage from nearby cameras that showed someone approaching Monje while he sat on the steps of the church. Cameras also captured the person fleeing down a nearby alley and ducking behind a dumpster.

Detectives searched the area around the dumpster and found a 9mm Polymer80 “ghost gun” that was later determined to be the murder weapon, according to the U.S. attorney’s office.

The case remained unsolved for months until law enforcement received notice of a Combined DNA Index System link between a DNA profile obtained from the magazine of the murder weapon and Jackson’s reference DNA profile, prosecutors said. CODIS is a web of federal, state and local indexes that allows laboratories to exchange DNA profiles electronically.

Homicide detectives from the Metropolitan Police Department arrested Jackson in the fatal shooting of Monje in December 2022.