A woman was sentenced Friday to 29 years to life in state prison for her involvement in the racially motivated murder of a black man whose skeletal remains were found about three months after he was beaten with a baseball bat, chased into the desert and stabbed.
“I know that what I did was awful and that I can’t do anything to make up for it,” Kelly Sorrell said of the July 1997 killing of Howard Garfield McClendon. “… I had no right to do what I did.”
Sorrell, 37, said she has kicked a drug habit and become a better person during a decade behind bars since her January 2004 arrest. She vowed to do what she could to help others.
Deputy District Attorney Geoffrey Lewin said McClendon was lured into a car by Sorrell and co-defendant Richard Phillip Ritchie and driven down a dirt road and savagely attacked so Sorrell could get lightning bolt tattoos, a supposed badge of honor for white supremacists who kill blacks.
The 32-year-old Los Angeles man was stabbed so many times that he was nearly decapitated, according to the prosecution. The victim’s remains were found by a man who was collecting cans.
“The court has never lost sight of the seriousness of this crime,” Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Stephen A. Marcus said shortly before imposing the sentence on Sorrell. “It is a horrific crime.”
But the judge said it was “refreshing” to see a criminal defendant acknowledge remorse, saying that he believed Sorrell was “truly remorseful” for what she had done.
Ritchie, 39, was convicted Thursday of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder, with jurors finding true the special circumstance allegations that the victim was murdered by means of lying in wait and because of his race.
He is facing life in prison without the possibility of parole, with sentencing set for Feb. 6.
— City News Service