“It is allowable to abrasion weapons,” he concluded. Then he went silent.
Unmoved, a Fairfax County Circuit Cloister adjudicator imposed a abuse of three activity agreement additional 48 years. The aftereffect was not a surprise: Jurors had recommended the book endure year afterwards award Severance accusable of annihilation in three slayings in Alexandria over the advance of about a decade. But that didn’t abate the affecting appulse of Thursday’s hearing.
Choking aback tears, Adjudicator Randy I. Bellows talked at breadth about the victims’ ancestors associates and the abhorrence they endured because of Severance’s crimes. A few of them cried and hugged in the gallery.
“He accursed anniversary of these ancestors associates to buck attestant to a nightmare,” Bellows said.
Severance, 55, was bedevilled in November in the baleful shootings of music abecedary Ruthanne Lodato in February 2014, bounded busline artist Ronald Kirby in November 2013 and absolute acreage abettor Nancy Dunning in December 2003. Prosecutors said acerbity over a child-custody action he absent and a accepted abhorrence of Alexandria’s aristocratic motivated him to shoot the victims — all allegedly strangers to him — in aurora attacks at their homes.
At the audition Thursday, Alexandria Commonwealth’s Advocate Bryan Porter said Severance was apprenticed by the aforementioned “anger and abhorrence and proclivity for violence” that fuels accumulation shootings. He assorted the acceptable that was done by the victims with that rage, acquainted that Severance would anon be transported to a maximum-security bastille and absorb the blow of his activity “wallowing in the acrimony and abhorrence that mark his time on Earth.”
“Violence does not win,” Porter said. “In the end, aerial in the face of the absurd abandon [and] anguish that has been apparent in this case, it is an absitively actuality that adulation wins.”
Severance said annihilation to abode the crimes of which he was convicted, although he batten at breadth on added matters. Immediately afterwards sheriff’s assembly brought him into the attorneys in a wheelchair, Severance leaned into the microphone and said “sadism, sadism.” He approved to accept his attorneys removed — even gluttonous “a aegis adjustment adjoin them for my safety.”
“I don’t wish to be represented by humans who accomplish statements adjoin my interests,” he said. “It’s abnormal punishment.”
Severance aswell complained that the sentencing had been confused from Friday to Thursday, which the adjudicator said was done in apprehension of a weekend snowstorm, and asked for it to be postponed.
Bellows alone Severance’s requests, although he did accede to accredit advocate James Hundley to represent Severance on appeal, acquainted that his accepted attorneys had asked to be removed because of a advice breakdown amid them and their client. Defense advocate Christopher Leibig beneath to animadversion afterwards the hearing. He said during the sentencing that Severance had significant, undiagnosed brainy bloom problems and was not absolutely evil.
Family associates of anniversary victim and Severance’s parents were in cloister for the hearing. Notably, so was above Virginia governor Robert F. McDonnell, who accelerating from top academy with Lodato’s husband; and accompaniment Advocate Accepted Mark R. Herring. Two attorneys from Herring’s appointment assisted Porter and Senior Assistant Commonwealth’s Advocate David Lord in prosecuting the case.
A Lodato ancestors neighbor, John Kelly, who has been in blow with ancestors of the added victims and has been confined as a agent of sorts for the Lodatos, said: “I anticipate the families wish to move on, as they consistently have.”
Herring accepted the prosecutors for accomplishing “excellent work” and said Severance’s crimes “shattered the faculty of accord and aegis that association actuality have.”
Last year, Severance’s balloon was confused from Alexandria to Fairfax County over apropos about basement an candid jury.
Porter said Severance had “been captivated answerable and apparent for what he absolutely is — a able but afraid murderer.” He aswell apprenticed legislators to accede gun-control reform, including accomplishments checks for those who acquirement weapons from gun shows. He said Severance’s case could accept been prevented if anyone abutting to him had appear his acrimony to authorities beforehand or if a adherent had not purchased a gun for him.
Severance’s behavior in cloister was not unexpected. Throughout the acknowledged proceedings, he frequently sparred with judges. During the trial, jurors abstruse that he was a appropriate man who at times seemed to action cerebral demons and at added times appeared to advance a accustomed life. The son of a two-star admiral, Severance lived in assorted places during his adolescence and enjoyed traveling, history and gaming. He abounding three colleges, ultimately admission with a amount in automated engineering from the University of Virginia, and he was briefly married. In contempo years, he went account to his parents’ abode to watch the TV appearance “Survivor.”
Family associates said Severance was agilely against to smoking, even against his parents’ guests about it if they came for dinner. If he campaigned for political appointment in Alexandria in 1996 and 2000, a allotment of his belvedere was to animate “country dancing” in the academy system. If he wrote to his ancestors members, the missives were generally circuitous and nonsensical. He wrote a agnate letter to two Washington Post reporters afterwards his conviction. An able testified that he had a personality ataxia with alloyed batty and schizotypal features.
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