Chapter 17 - The Sentencing
Six weeks later, Judge Alvarez presided over the formal sentencing hearing. The courtroom was packed once more, but this time, the defense didn't even attempt to offer excuses. Vance Sterling simply stood and requested the court consider his clients' lack of prior criminal records when determining the length of their incarceration.
Judge Alvarez adjusted his robes, leaned forward over the elevated mahogany bench, and looked down at Marcus and Diane with an expression of pure judicial wrath. He held up the thick binder containing the sentencing guidelines and the victim impact statements we had submitted the week prior.
“In my thirty years on the bench, I have presided over cases involving hardened cartel hitmen, bank robbers, and serial fraudsters,” Judge Alvarez began, his voice dropping to a low, dangerous rumble that commanded total silence. “But rarely have I encountered a crime so devoid of human empathy, so utterly repugnant to the basic principles of decency and filial duty, as what I have witnessed in this courtroom.”
He turned his gaze directly toward Marcus, who shrank back under the scrutiny like a reprimanded child. “You were given the sacred responsibility of protecting your mother in her golden years. Instead, you transformed her home into a private torture chamber. You stripped her of her dignity, her financial security, and her sanity, all to fund a lifestyle of vulgar, unearned luxury.”
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“It is the judgment of this court,” Judge Alvarez declared, raising his gavel high above his desk, “that Marcus Jenkins be sentenced to a term of three hundred and sixty months—thirty years—in the custody of the Federal Bureau of Prisons, without the possibility of early parole. Diane Jenkins, for your role in the physical assault and chemical poisoning of the victim, you are sentenced to three hundred and twenty months in a federal women's penitentiary. You are both ordered to pay full financial restitution in the amount of one point two million dollars, effective immediately.”
The gavel slammed down with a definitive, echoing crack that sealed their fate forever.
