Calling him “shockingly evil and hateful,” a DuPage County judge Tuesday sentenced a Naperville man to life in prison without parole for murdering his teenage stepdaughter.
“I have seen a lot of crime scenes in the last 25 years, but none compared to this case,” Judge Kathryn Creswell said in handing down the sentence to Laurence Lovejoy, 44.
Lovejoy, who twice avoided prosecutors’ attempts to have him sentenced to death, will spend the rest of his life behind bars for the May 2004 murder of Erin Justice, a Waubonsie Valley High School sophomore who several weeks before the slaying accused Lovejoy of raping her.
Evidence showed that on the day the 16-year-old Justice died, Lovejoy forced her to take lethal doses of medication, beat her, slit her throat and wrists, and drowned her in a bathtub.
Lovejoy initially was convicted and sentenced to death by a jury in 2007. But the Illinois Supreme Court overturned the conviction and the sentence on the defense’s contention that it was unable to rebut last-minute forensic evidence.
DuPage County State’s Attorney Robert Berlin again sought death at a January retrial, and though the jury convicted Lovejoy of murder, it declined to declare him eligible for a death sentence.
“Natural life is the most I can award and it is deserved,” Creswell said. “You are shockingly evil and hateful.”
Even if Lovejoy had remained on death row after his first trial, his life most likely would have been spared. During that first trial and for the last several years, a moratorium on executions in the state was in place. And last week, Gov. Pat Quinn signed into law a bill that abolishes the death penalty. Quinn also commuted the sentences of all 15 men on death row to life in prison.
Justice had claimed that Lovejoy had sexually assaulted her in the Naperville apartment where the family lived. No criminal charges had been filed, but Lovejoy had been ordered to stay away from Justice. The girl and her mother moved to an Aurora townhouse. On a day when the girl was home alone, Lovejoy went to the townhouse and murdered her, according to testimony at both trials.
“He didn’t just want to kill her, he wanted to make her suffer,” Berlin said.
Valerie Justice, the victim’s mother said: “He got what he deserved, for the second time. This is bittersweet, and I would rather have my daughter.”
