Sanders was ordered to pay court costs and restitution of $6,111.61 for Smith’s funeral. Sanders, credited with 281 days of jail-time credit, faces a May 18 trial date for a separate possession of heroin charge. He will not be eligible for parole until he serves a minimum of 18 years.
Smith was 28.
“When people talk about April Fool’s Day, it will mean something completely different for me for the rest of my life,” Smith’s mother, Mary, told Judge Michael Tucker. “The pain I feel can not be qualified. The hurt in my heart is so deep. I am drenched in my sadness and I feel a burning sense of justice.”
Prosecutors said after getting skunked by Smith’s friend in a 1-on-1 basketball game, Sanders didn’t like being teased, so he shot Smith five times in the back, neck, arm, stomach and chest in broad daylight in a crowded park.
Sanders then walked over to Smith and “delivered the execution shot, directly to the victim’s head, within 24 inches of his body,” prosecutors wrote in a sentencing memorandum.
Smith’s mother asked Sanders, “What are we so angry about that we decide the only solution is to take another person’s life? What could be so serious that we decided that death is the answer?”
Sanders, who claimed self-defense and that Smith had a weapon, turned to the crowded courtroom gallery and apologized.
“But still, I feel that I did what was right at that moment even though it happened and I’m sorry, but it could have easily been me as well as him,” said Sanders, who also apologized to his own family.
“If you … can take that in your heart to forgive me or just, if it takes a long period of time, just someway, somehow, try to, because I’m not the person the news try to make me to be or these people (prosecutors) make me to be,” Sanders continued. “I’m not no animal, no bad guy. None of that. Everyone who knows me knows that.”
Defense attorney Anthony Cicero said, “I think everybody there was just trying to make sense of a community and a society in which guns are so prevalent that they’re on a basketball court,” adding that Sanders will appeal.
Prosecutors wrote that Sanders took the stand in his own defense and offered false testimony.
“The fact of the matter is that this defendant was embarrassed by what the victim was saying and to combat that he grabbed a gun and executed him,” prosecutor Cynthia Mullins wrote.
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