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The animals have been sentenced:

Judge sentences student's killer
by Sara Dover
Staff Writer

October 16, 2006

The two teens awaiting sentencing for their roles in the murder of an NYU student appeared in court on Friday, where one received a three-year sentence and friends and family testified on behalf of the other.
Andre Johnson, 15, and Clarence Hassan Mayfield, 16, appeared before Judge Mary Bednar in New York City Family Court for the two separate hearings regarding the death of 20-year-old Broderick John “JB” Hehman last April.

Johnson was sentenced to a maximum of three years in a juvenile detention facility with the state’s Office of Children and Family Services. The sentence can be extended each year until his 21st birthday, a spokesperson for the city said.

Johnson is the third of Hehman’s four murderers to receive sentencing. A few weeks earlier, Humberto Guzman and Denzell Fell, both 14, were sentenced to 18 months in the juvenile detention facility. All four boys pleaded guilty to second-degree murder this past summer, after testifying that they had chased Hehman into the street in Harlem in an attempt to rob him. Hehman, a CAS junior, was then hit by a car and died of a brain hemorrhage three days later.

Johnson appeared in court with his parents and other family members, all of whom refused to comment.

In a separate hearing following Johnson’s sentencing, members of Mayfield’s family testified on his behalf and spoke about his good character, bringing the teen to tears at one point.

“I’d like for them to give him a chance,” Mayfield’s mother, Natasha Jenkins, said during questioning by her son’s attorney, Earl Rawlins. “He wants to be a lawyer.”

Mayfield’s grandmother, Carol Mayfield, said in her testimony that Clarence Hassan Mayfield would always come to her house and help her out with chores.

“I was really upset when I found out that happened,” she said, “because that’s not [like] Hassan.”

Rawlins also presented several certificates to the court that were awarded to Mayfield while he was in school for excellence in and academics and behavior for success in a basketball tournament.

Prosecutor Laurie Smith, arguing for the New York City Law Department, pointed out that Mayfield received those awards while he was in a school detention program.

Jenkins said she thought her son was benefiting from the detention, but added that he would have been doing well anyway.

Six of Mayfield’s friends came to the courthouse to support him.

“They said it was a full moon that night,” Drew Singleton, a friend, said. “Bad luck that was.”

Dell Taylor, another friend, was also very dismayed by Mayfield’s situation.

“He was locked up on his birthday. We got some shirts [that said:] ‘Let my man go,’ ” he said. “It was just the wrong place at the wrong time. It’s how it happens.”

Hehman’s family did not appear at either the sentencing or the trial, but Bednar said she had letters from both his immediate family and a relative expressing their concern and interest in the cases.

I won't comment except to express my deepest sorrows for the family of that exceptional young man, John Broderick Hehman. If there were more like him, this world would be a much much better place.