Thug Life Army

Corey Bussey, 26 was sentenced yesterday for killing Roderick Padgett, 21. Bussey thought Padgett had killed his hip-hop rap artist friend Raymond (Freaky Tah) Rogers.

Corey Bussey from Queens, was convicted in the mistaken identity shooting and was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

"The victim, Roderick Padgett, was fatally wounded in an execution-style shooting in a terrible and tragic case of mistaken identity," Queens District Attorney Richard Brown said.

"Though today's sentencing closed the book on the case, it doesn''t eradicate the harm and suffering that the defendant's action inflicted on the victim and his family."

As part of a plea deal that could see him released in about two years, Bussey last month admitted he shot Padgett in a South Ozone Park alley on March 31, 1999.

Padgett, who was hit in the head, side, arm and leg, was virtually hunted down as he left a club that night, shot as he climbed a fence, and shot again as he was on the ground, prosecutors said.

Bussey, of St. Albans, was convicted in 2002 of killing Padgett and sentenced to 15 years to life, but the conviction was overturned when an appeals court ruled his lawyer should have considered using an alibi.

After his arrest, Bussey had told cops that he couldn''t have shot Padgett because he was at a memorial gathering for his friend hip-hop rap artist Freaky Tah, the lead singer of the hip-hop rap group Lost Boyz.

"He had a viable alibi defense," said his lawyer, Edwin Schulman. "But the risk was too great to go to trial [because] it would have brought out the suggestion that this murder was a revenge killing, something that wasn''t brought out at the first trial."

Yesterday, Corey Bussey’s only request, made through his lawyer, was that he serve out the remainder of his sentence at Eastern Correctional Facility in Ulster County, where he has spent the last six years.