Melissa Burch Harton, the Loyola College doctoral student convicted of strangling her best friend last March, agrees she should be sentenced.
She just doesn?t think she should have to serve 10 years in prison.
Harton, 26, of Columbia, this week filed an appeal of her sentencing in Howard County Circuit Court, arguing that her punishment is too harsh.
Harton?s attorney, Michael Kaminkow, asked a three-judge panel Monday to suspend her prison term and give her five years of probation with 250 hours of community service speaking to high school and college students of the “dangers and evils” of binge drinking.
“Ms. Harton will be haunted to the end of her days with the memory that her best friend died at her hand ? .” Kaminkow wrote in Harton?s application for review of sentence.
In addition, Kaminkow argued that Howard County Circuit Court Judge Lenore Gelfman essentially undermined the jury?s involuntary manslaughter verdict with her sentence, treating Harton as if she had been convicted of murder. Ten years is the maximum penalty for involuntary manslaughter.
“While the court indicated it respected the jury?s verdict, the court gave every indication both in comment and actions that had it been the court?s decision, it would have reached a different verdict,” he wrote.
Prosecutors have not yet filed a response to Harton?s application for review of sentence, said Wayne Kirwan, spokesman for Howard County?s State?s Attorney Timothy McCrone.
Bacchus? husband, John Magee, said Thursday that he took offense to Harton?s request for a lighter sentence.
“She attacked and murdered my wife,” he said. “She doesn?t show any remorse. She doesn?t admit she has a problem.She?s a monster, and she should be in jail for the rest of her life.”
A Howard County grand jury indicted Harton on first-degree murder charges in April 2005, after Howard County Police and prosecutors alleged Harton choked her friend and classmate, Natasha Bacchus, 31, of Stewartstown, Pa., to death near Ellicott City?s Centennial Park on March 9, 2005.
During Harton?s murder trial, which began Feb. 1, prosecutors portrayed Harton as a cold-blooded killer, who choked Bacchus so hard that she broke a bone in her neck, dumped her body in the parking lot of The Meeting House at Dorsey?s Search, and then repeatedly lied to police to throw them off her trail.
But Harton?s defense attorneys categorized the altercation that led to Bacchus? death as a mutual fight, adding that both women were so drunk that Harton could not have formed the intent necessary for a first-degree murder conviction.
