"You may sit down, Mr. Silverman," the jurist instructed him.
"But, Your Honor," Silverman sputtered, momentarily at a loss for words. "Judge, uh, if I thought you were going to give her the maximum, I'd sit down right now."
"Sit down," Martin said again, his words bringing a collective gasp from the victims' families gathered at the November 21 hearing. They leaned forward in their seats.
"I don't need a lot of conversation to know what to do," Martin explained. "It is clear to me from the evidence that Cheryl Armstrong caused this to happen, and she exulted in it." And with that, Martin handed down the toughest sentence he could--96 years. Armstrong, seventeen, will be an old woman when--or if--she leaves prison.
It's what the victims' families had prayed for.
According to prosecutors, Armstrong ("Natural Bored Killers," November 22) was the "mastermind" behind the April 17 slayings of eighteen-year-old Terrance Mayo and seventeen-year-old Rachelle Peterson. They contend that Armstrong talked her friends into killing the duo because she was consumed by jealousy when Mayo, her former boyfriend, began seeing Peterson. At the time of the murders, Peterson was pregnant with Mayo's child.
Armstrong and three young men--Greg Romero, Donnell Lavar Carter and Terry Bawiec-- were charged with first-degree murder in the case. Romero and Carter have been found guilty as charged and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. But the jury in Armstrong's October trial chose to convict her of two counts of second-degree murder. (No trial date has been set for Bawiec, who is undergoing psychological evaluation to determine his ability to stand trial.)
Conviction of the lesser crimes meant Armstrong could have received as little as sixteen years in prison on each murder count, a fact that dismayed the victims' families. They asked Silverman and Deputy DA Elizabeth Silva to demand the maximum sentence. The Petersons and the Mayos also wrote letters to the judge requesting a long prison term and prepared statements to read at the sentencing hearing. Silverman wrote his own tough speech and had a television brought in the courtroom in order to play Romero's videotaped statement to police for the gallery. No one would hear it. But spectators did hear Armstrong's futile attempt to downplay her involvement in the murders.
Armstrong and her family were allowed to address the court first. Her mother and two aunts pleaded for leniency. "She's not the kind of person who should be thrown away and forgotten about," Amstrong's mother told the judge.
"I know the families hate me," a teary Armstrong admitted to the court, "and from what I've heard, I can't blame them." But, she said, "I'm really not the horrible person that everyone has made me out to be.
"I did not tell Greg Romero and Lavar Carter to kill two people, and I never wanted anyone to die. What they did, they did of their own free will."
Armstrong told the court, too, that she was beginning to change her ways at the time she was arrested. A high school dropout, she said she had been planning to earn an equivalency degree, go to college and study psychology. In fact, she told a disbelieving gallery, she had considered a career as a police officer.
Apparently, Armstrong's performance made Silverman's unnecessary--at least in the judge's eyes.
When Martin handed down his sentence, Armstrong didn't visibly react. "She was stone cold," prosecutor Silva said.
