TOLEDO, Ohio (AP) — An Ohio judge sentenced a man to life without parole after rejecting his insanity defense in the shooting deaths of two of his girlfriend’s three young sons and the injury of the third.
Kevin Moore, 29, was sentenced to concurrent life sentences on Thursday for two aggravated murders in the February 2021 deaths of 14-month-old Gabriel Phillips and 5-year-old Ahmir Phillips, The Toledo reported. Blade.
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He was also given a concurrent sentence of 10 to 15 years for attempted aggravated murder and nine years for weapons. A felony assault charge was merged with the attempted murder charge for sentencing purposes.
Before convicting the defendant on all counts, Judge Eric Allen Marks ruled that the defense failed to meet the burden of proof required under state law for the defense of insanity. A week earlier, he had heard two psychologists’ assessments of Moore’s state of mind at the time of the Toledo shooting.
A psychologist cited the stringency of Ohio’s law on the use of the insanity defense which requires substantial evidence of the inability to distinguish right from wrong. He and another psychologist said that despite Moore’s severe schizophrenic mental illness, he demonstrated that he understood he had been wrong. A third psychiatrist said Moore’s ramblings and actions were consistent with a schizophrenic patient not taking proper medication.
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Marks told the defendant that it was clear to the court “that on some level you understood the wrongfulness of your actions. … The horrifying nature of this, I’m sure, torments you as it torments everyone associated with this investigation.
The judge also said Moore should never have had access to a gun and called on society to “try to identify ways to keep guns out of the hands of people with this type of disease and defect.” mental”.
Moore asked the family of the victims for forgiveness “as I struggle to forgive myself.” He said in a statement read by his lawyer “how terribly sorry one parent is for another, because I myself have three daughters. …I don’t know how I could breathe without one of mine.
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