Life terms for N.J. man in schoolyard slayings

NEWARK, N.J. - With the anguished words of the victims' relatives providing a preamble, a Newark man convicted in the execution-style slayings of three college-bound friends in a schoolyard was sentenced Thursday to a prison term of more than 200 years by a judge who said the killings had been produced by "a mind diseased."

Rodolfo Godinez, convicted in May on 17 counts including murder, felony murder, robbery, and weapons offenses, was given three consecutive life sentences plus 20 years by state Superior Court Judge Michael Ravin, who followed the state's sentencing request.

The Nicaraguan immigrant, 27, is one of six defendants in the case; the other five await separate trials.

Ravin called Godinez "a menace" and referred to the "monstrousness of what happened in a place where, by day, one would hear the laughter of children at play."

Before Ravin pronounced sentence, a procession of family members spoke about victims Terrance Aeriel, Iofemi Hightower, and Dashon Harvey. The last to speak was a woman who survived the attacks and in chilling testimony at Godinez's trial described being sexually assaulted, slashed with a machete, and shot in the head.

"Y'all left me for dead, but I'm still here and I just graduated" from college, said the woman, who is not being identified because of the sexual assault charges. Turning to Ravin, she asked: "Are you going to inform us when he dies? Because if you do, I think I'm going to have a party."

Godinez looked uninterested through most of the 21/2-hour proceeding and did not speak in his defense. He sat during the families' comments without looking at the speakers, and looked the other way when Renee Tucker, Terrance Aeriel's mother, beseeched the judge, "I want him to turn and look at me!"

The viciousness of the killings rocked New Jersey's largest city, where the homicide rate had spiked 50 percent in the previous several years, and it helped hasten anticrime measures that have been credited with lowering the homicide rate.

The victims' backgrounds added to the outrage: All four were enrolled or about to be enrolled at Delaware State University, and none had a criminal record; 18-year-old Aeriel was an ordained minister and had recently taken Hightower to a high school prom.

Hightower was "my angel," her mother, Shalga, said Thursday, who "had a million-dollar smile that would warm your heart" and loved reading, singing, dancing, and writing poetry.

The three victims were found slumped against a wall of Newark's Mount Vernon School playground on Aug. 4, 2007, each dead of a gunshot wound to the back of the head. Hightower and the survivor also were slashed with a machete.

The survivor, who was 19 at the time of the attacks, identified two other suspects from her hospital bed, leading to the capture of all six within two weeks of the slayings.

At trial, prosecutors used Godinez's statements to police to portray him as a ranking member of the MS-13 street gang and the one who orchestrated the attack, which started as a robbery.

"These kids you attacked were not part of your lifestyle, and that makes you a coward," Harvey's father, James, said Thursday. "Enjoy the rest of your life in prison, because society will not miss you or your kind."

Godinez was not tied to the gun or machete used in the attacks but was convicted under New Jersey's accomplice liability law. Defense attorney Roy Greenman said he would appeal Thursday's sentence as well as the trial verdict.