Saul Dos Reis, Jr's claim that he killed the troubled 13-year-old girl he met online accidentally during sex didn't wash with the judge who sentenced him May 6 to 30 years in prison.
Saying he was shocked by Dos Reis's defense to minimize his responsibility for killing Christina Long last May, hit Dos Reis with the maximum, Superior Court Judge Patrick L. Carroll III called the defense's charge that Christina died of an enlarged heart and irregular heartbeat during rough sex "distract(ing) from the underlying facts," said the Hartford Courant.
"It's not so much what caused her death as the fact she died at the defendant's hands," the judge said at the sentencing. "Perhaps we can agree it was an accident that she died. But it wasn't an accident that you were there. It wasn't an accident that you knew she was underage, that you engaged in sex with her and put your hands around her neck."
"People say I am evil," Dos Reis said at the sentencing. "They don't know the pain I feel inside. Every second I live is a reminder of what happened that night."
He had pleaded guilty to first degree manslaughter and sexual assault as part of a plea deal which kept his prison maximum to 30 years, the Courant said. His plea came under the so-called Alford Doctrine, where a defendant acknowledges there's enough evidence to convict him on trial without agreeing to the authorities' interpretation of his guilt.
His plea for the court's mercy was neutralized by Carroll, who said he was shown more than enough mercy when he wasn't charged with murder and was offered a plea deal giving him less than 50 years behind bars, the newspaper said.
