Emotions grip courtroom
staffina security
A girl's family tells of grief during her killer's sentencing.
By Ramon Coronado -- Sacramento Bee Staff Writer - (Published February
2, 2002)
Everyone grieved for Courtney Sconce on Friday.
Her parents, who recounted their minute-by-minute agony as their
daughter went from a missing 12-year-old girl to a murder victim, her
raped and
strangled body abandoned along a Sutter County riverbank.
Her killer, Justin Michael Weinberger, who told a packed courtroom
during his sentencing of the injustice of being allowed to live.
And the Sacramento Superior Court judge, whose staid reputation gave
way to human emotion as he listened to those who knew Courtney try to
describe her short but vibrant life, try to find meaning in a senseless
act, try to find solace in the life prison sentence her assailant will
serve.
But there was no solace.
"Closure is a myth. It is a word people use that haven't been through
something like this," said Courtney's father, Mark Sconce, as tears fell
on the
paper from which he read.
She was on her way to a Rancho Cordova neighborhood store when she
vanished Nov. 8, 2000. Courtney's kidnapping and slaying forever changed
the neighborhood; it has left her family in anguish.
"My heart breaks a little more every day I think of this," said
Cynthia Sconce, her mother. "I feel untold guilt because I couldn't and
didn't protect her on that day."
Two days before the abduction, investigators had gone to Weinberger's
El Dorado Hills home and found child pornography. That made him angry,
according to probation reports. To get even with society, he decided to
abduct a girl.
On the day of the abduction, according to a probation report,
Weinberger took LSD and watched several girls leave W.E. Mitchell Middle
School. He
followed one, who was walking alone, but she got away when she entered a
house, the report said.
He turned his attention to another. Courtney was taken at gunpoint to
Sutter County, where she was attacked.
On Friday, the 20-year-old construction company clerk and son of a
ranking state deputy attorney general said he was remorseful for what he
had done. His face was drawn as he read from a piece of paper.
"I don't believe justice will be served until the minute I am not
breathing," Weinberger said.
He spoke for about 10 minutes, wiping tears from his face. He
admitted he was a rapist and a murderer but said he didn't know why he
had done it. He said he couldn't imagine the hurt he has caused.
"Maybe if I would have gone to church more often, maybe if I had
friends or maybe if I had joined clubs, maybe it would have been
different."
The life he took represented everything his was not.
More than 1,000 people attended Courtney's funeral, fondly
remembering the little girl who could hold her own with boys on the
basketball court just as easily as she could giggle with her
girlfriends. And for months, while authorities searched for her killer,
the neighborhood kept her memory alive with a street corner memorial of
candles and personal notes of pain.
"She was caring and outgoing. She was special," Weinberger said. "The
Sconce family and Rancho Cordova will never be the same. My name will be
synonymous with evil. I deserve to die."
In a plea agreement arranged with federal and state public defenders,
Weinberger will have no parole. He will serve 10 years in federal prison
for
trafficking child pornography online, then will be transferred to a
state prison, where he will spend the rest of his life.
Despite his capture, the memory of what he did haunts Courtney's
neighborhood and her peers at W.E. Mitchell Middle School. Richard Shaw,
the school's principal, wrote in a letter that the impact of the crime
has been devastating.
"A sense of safety and well-being has been ripped from" the students
and the community, Shaw wrote. Since the murder, three of Courtney's
friends have "exhibited extreme behaviors." One transferred to another
school and another was admitted into a program for the "severely
emotionally disturbed," Shaw wrote.
There were students among the crowd in court Friday, some wearing
buttons with Courtney's photograph.
No one appeared to be there for Weinberger. His mother died of a bone
marrow disease three weeks after the murder, the probation report said.
In addition to Courtney's mother and father, her uncle and
grandmother were there to speak about her.
"I'll never forget those gorgeous brown eyes. She was a sparkling
girl. Her face will always live in my heart and mind," said grandmother
Harriet Sconce, her bottom lip trembling as she spoke.
Courtney's father said in the 15 months since his daughter's murder,
he has sold his house, quit one job and started another.
"I even tried to find God," he said. "I've lost faith in that because
I still haven't found the comfort people talk about."
He still sees the little girl's body he had to identify that fatal
day.
"They showed me that terrible picture. The one that parents hope they
will never see," he said. "I saw her eyes open, but they were lifeless
and searching for someone to help her."
After family members spoke, Superior Court Judge Patrick Marlette
prepared to pronounce sentence. A former prosecutor known for his steely
demeanor, he couldn't find the words.
He squinted in an effort to hold back tears. His clerk handed him
tissue.
With his voice cracking, he described how Weinberger had stolen
dreams from a community, a family and a 12-year-old girl.
"Little dreams of a warm bath, the smell of her home, the warmth of
her sister and mother were taken," Marlette said. "Little dreams of 'N
Sync and scrunchies were shattered by this stranger."