The prosecutor thought the two young men deserved a chance not to die in prison for the murder involving a Craigslist sale but the DeKalb judge had no room for mercy.
Superior Court Judge Cynthia Becker sentenced Contevious Stepp-McCommons, 20, and Malik Rice, 19, to life in prison without parole for the murder of Clarence Martin Gardenhire Jr., a man who for his relatives defined the phrase “salt of the earth.”
“I carefully observed both of you,” said Becker of the defendants’ conduct during trial. “Not once did I ever see any suggestion of worry, sadness or remorse. It was a joke.”
The 56-year-old Gardenhire died in August 2013 after Stepp-McCommons shot him several times during a late night Craigslist-related robbery. The retired railroad employee from Tallahassee, Fla., was in Atlanta for a grandson’s birth.
“My dad came into my life at age five years old and one thing that speaks out in that he chose to love me,” said Jennifer Lopez-Pierrelus, after being handed tissues by the judge. “Even when I became a mother at the age of 17, my daddy didn’t throw me away. He told me that I could be anything I wanted to be. Today I am a business owner and I am also an evangelist. My father was murdered eight days after my ordination.”
Joan Gardenhire testified that she had suffered financially and emotionally in the two years since her husband was killed. She and her daughter both testified that they had never seen any sincere remorse from Rice or Stepp-McCommons.
“Decisions have consequences,” she said to the two men at the sentencing hearing. “You are in the position that you are in because of the decisions you made.”
Bill Clark, a prosecutor with two decades of experience, however, urged Becker to allow the men a chance for parole in mid-life because they were both 18 at the time of the robbery without felony records.
“I was basically taking into consideration how young they were,” Clark told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “I intended for them to be very old when they did get out of prison.”
The crime, however, “was just an execution,” he said.
The men used a bogus ad for an iPhone on Craigslist to lure Gardenhire and another relative to an abandoned house on Shallowridge Drive near southeast Atlanta at 11 p.m. Gardenhire went with the family member to buy cellphones to use in a new business in Buckhead.
Stepp-McCommons did the actual shooting during the robbery, but Becker, who is quitting the bench this month, made it clear she considered Rice the leader of the crime.“While you did not pull the trigger you set this up, if anything you are more culpable than Mr. Stepp-McCommons,” said the judge, who then noticed a reaction from Rice. “You just rolled your eyes. That is … what I am talking about. You had a lot more opportunity.”
When she pronounced the sentence of life without parole, one of Stepp-McCommons relatives collapsed and wept hysterically. Stepp-McCommons looked pained and frustrated by the scene.
As he was led away to return to the DeKalb jail, he looked over at the Gardenhire family and said slowly and quietly but clearly:
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
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