LOCKPORT – Jennifer R. Marchant, the North Tonawanda woman who claimed she killed her boyfriend in self-defense only to see a jury reject the claim, was sentenced today to 12 years in state prison.
The sentence left both sides unhappy.
Michelle Stone, the mother of victim Ralph D. Stone Jr., declared, “It’s not enough time. She brutally murdered my son.”
Edwin Marchant, the defendant’s father, called the sentence “completely unjust.”
The judge herself said that in 35 years in the criminal justice system, she’d never seen a situation where the police didn’t agree with the district attorney.
According to Niagara County Judge Sara Sheldon Farkas, the three North Tonawanda detectives who investigated the case agreed that Marchant killed Stone in self-defense.
Farkas quoted Lt. Karen Smith as saying, “It’s a shame she was found guilty.”
Defense attorney Dominic Saraceno said, “They didn’t even want to charge her. They were instructed to charge her by the District Attorney’s Office ... and they knew Ralph Stone.”
Saraceno cited a half-inch stack of police reports of domestic violence by Stone against another woman who bore his child. But Marchant had a history, too, having stabbed one ex-boyfriend and physically attacked another.
“I think there’s responsibility on both sides,” said Farkas, who had to choose somewhere between five and 25 years for first-degree manslaughter,
the charge Marchant was convicted of Jan. 15.
Stone’s parents and Assistant District Attorney Lisa M. Baehre asked for the maximum. Saraceno sought the minimum.
Marchant, 24, stabbed Stone, 24, to death in her Oliver Street apartment on the night of Feb. 6, 2013. She told police Stone was drunk and was chasing her around the apartment, pulling her hair in the bathroom, where the stabbing occurred.
Marchant, who starred in Internet pornography under the name “Scarlett Rouge,” grabbed a kitchen knife from a butcher block as Stone followed her. Stone was not armed.
According to Marchant’s statement to North Tonawanda police, Stone taunted her by saying, “Stab me. Be the boss. Stab me.”
Marchant did, plunging the knife once into Stone’s upper left chest and severing his pulmonary artery, causing him to bleed to death in a matter of minutes.
Stone had made several 911 calls in the minutes before the stabbing and then refused to talk to dispatchers, who called back. He assured police there was no trouble.
An officer was dispatched to the scene because of the repeated calls and arrived just after the stabbing.
Officer Timothy Sylvester said the stricken Stone lunged at him and was taken to the floor, and then immediately went limp. Sylvester said blood was gushing from Stone’s chest .
“If you had a garden hose that was pressurized and you cut it in half – imagining the water was blood, that’s how much blood was coming out,” he testified.
A toxicology test at the autopsy showed Stone’s blood alcohol content was 0.285 percent, about 3½ times the legal threshold for intoxication. Marchant scored a 0.06 percent blood alcohol reading on a Breathalyzer at police headquarters that night.
Testimony in the trial showed that Stone weighed 220 pounds and Marchant weighed 240.
In a two-hour videotape of her questioning by police, Marchant kept her composure until breaking down when told she was being charged with murder. A grand jury indicted her only for manslaughter, however.
Saraceno criticized the state’s self-defense law after the jury verdict, saying it gave Marchant practically no chance of acquittal.
New York law says a person has a duty to retreat when confronted and can’t strike back unless they have a reasonable fear of being on the receiving end of “deadly physical force.”
Saraceno said in Florida, which has a “stand your ground” law, Marchant might have been acquitted.
email: tprohaska@buffnews.com