Sanders’ grandmother Mary Muha was found dead in her Washington Twp. home on Sugarside Court, on Dec. 20, 2011. Law enforcement officials said Sanders killed Muha and stole her TV.
The fact that she pleaded no contest — meaning she declined to contest the charges — instead of pleading guilty, showed a lack of remorse, assistant Montgomery County prosecutor David Franceschelli told common pleas Judge Mary Katherine Huffman.
But Sanders’ assistant county public defenders, Carl Goraleski and Mike Pentecost, said that she made that plea on their advice. Goraleski said that Sanders, who had been a crack cocaine user, was now clean and sober and remorseful.
“My grandma, she raised me. She was like a mother to me. Sometimes I can’t even wrap my mind around what happened,” Sanders told the judge.
Prosecutors asked for a sentence of life without the possibility of parole, but Huffman gave her 25-to-life on the aggravated murder charges, plus three additional years on the aggravated robbery to be served consecutively. The 36 months Sanders received on the tampering charge is to run concurrently with the aggravated robbery charge.
“This was a premeditated act,” Huffman said. “You made it clear that you planned this.”
But Huffman also referred to Pentecost’s story of watching her counsel another jail inmate and said “you can do something very positive if you choose to.”
At the time of her arrest, investigators said they believed the crime was a homicidal attack fueled by a crack cocaine addiction. Sanders sold the TV for money to buy drugs. Sanders told detectives she had been partying since Dec. 18 when she beat her grandmother, Montgomery County Sheriff Phil Plummer said.
He said Sanders had been living off and on in her grandmother’s house. “She pretty much drained all the finances,” Plummer said at the time of her indictment. The sheriff said he thought Sanders went into a rage and beat the woman because there was no money for drugs.
She took Muha’s car and was picked up by Ohio State Patrol troopers the next day in Preble County when she ran out of gas.
Plummer said in December that Sanders gave detectives a full, written confession in the killing.
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