Baseball-bat killer gets federal death sentence

NEW HAVEN -- For the first time in Connecticut's federal court history, a judge sentenced a defendant to death for the brutal baseball-bat beatings of three duct-taped victims in a Bridgeport apartment house.

Azibo Aquart, minus the customary dreadlocks that earned him the street name `Dreddy," showed no emotion while U.S. District Judge Janet Bond Arterton handed down the sentence imposed by a jury on June 15, 2011.

She ordered Aquart, 32, taken to the special confinement unit at the federal prison in Terre Haute, Ind., where he will join 57 others on death row.

The judge also ordered a portion of Aquart's future puny prison job earnings be used to repay the $17,106 in funeral expenses the three victims' families incurred.

"He should be treated like the animal he is," said Latavia Whittingham, a daughter of Tina Johnson, one of the victims. "What he did is characteristic of an animal. I will never find it in my heart to forgive him.

But imposition of the sentence won't came anytime soon.

Michael Sheehan, one of Aquart's court-appointed, lawyers, said appeals will be filed.

Aquart, the reputed head of a crack trafficking ring that operated out of an apartment house at 215 Charles St., was convicted in 2011 of planning, ordering and participating in the murders of Tina Johnson, a small time rival; her boyfriend, James Reid and a family friend, Basil Williams. Aquart led a group which included his brother, Azikiwie, who is serving a life sentence, dressed in black wearing ski masks and vinyl gloves.

During the pre-dawn hours of Aug. 24, 2005, they broke into Johnson's first floor apartment, bolted the door shut from the inside and mummified the trio in duct tape.

One of the participants, John Taylor, testified that Azibo that grabbed a baseball bat and beat Johnson and Williams to death while his brother battered Reid.

Taylor, who was sentenced to nine years in prison for his role, said at one point Azibo offered him the bat and asked him "if you want some of this."

A fourth participant, Efrain Johnson, is awaiting a mandatory life sentence.

On Monday, Whittingham addressed the court and related how on the first day of Aquart's 2011 trial two years ago "he looked at me and told me `it was business, nothing personal.'"

"You were extremely wrong. It was extremely personal," she said. "When the jury came back and said death, it made me feel better a whole lot better."

She then told Arterton: "He will never do that to anyone ever again ... Forgiveness is something I will never have in my heart."

Whittingham, who is due to give birth Jan. 20, said the daughter she is carrying will be named Tina, after her mother.

Eleanor Layne, Williams's sister-in-law, told the judge his death occurred on her daughter's birthday.

"She doesn't celebrate it any more," Layne told the judge. "She just goes to his gravesite."

The death sentence, coming so close to the horrifying massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School, was touched on by both the victims' families and Sheehan, the defense lawyer.

Pamela Williams, Basil's sister who lives in Stratford, said listening to accounts of the horrifying events in Newtown caused her to flashback to the gruesome way her brother was battered to death.

"It brought back so many emotions," she said. "I pass by his cemetery every day I to go to work. My heart is heavy."

Sheehan said he was numb both by the events in Newtown and the imposition of the death sentence in this courtroom. He termed it another "sad day for Connecticut."

He said the death penalty causes "good people to be "executioners" and "that is a form of sadness."

He claimed the majority of people on death row are "men of color" and he questioned the "politics of disparity."

Aquart is expected to be moved to the Indiana facility in this next few weeks. The two-story facility houses 50 cells and includes an industrial work shop, indoor and outdoor recreations, a food preparation area and a video-teleconferencing room used for court proceedings.

While Aquart is the first Connecticut man to face a federal death penalty, the government executed Louis Jones Jr., a 53-year-old former Gulf War veteran, on March 18, 2003, for raping and killing a 19-year-old female soldier.

Source: http://www.ctpost.com/local/article/Baseball-bat-killer-gets-federal-death-sentence-4125945.php

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