Courtroom cheers after convicted child killer gets 25 years

Berkeley Brean

[anvplayer video=”5093526″ station=”998131″]

ROCHESTER, N.Y. (WHEC) — Applause erupted inside a courtroom after Anthony Love, convicted of killing a child, got 25 years in prison. That was the maximum Love could get.

When Judge Vicki Argento imposed it she said "I wish I could give you more."

The family of Kei’mere "Moochie" Marshall poured out of the courtroom after the sentencing. Deaire Phillips was Moochie’s godmother.

Brean: "Deaire, what do you think prompted the applause after the sentence?"

Phillips: "Because he wasn’t charged with first degree murder we felt like the sentencing was going to be he’s going to get 15 years, it’s done. We really wanted him to get the max and when he did get the max it made us so happy."

Love was charged with murder. He just wasn’t convicted of it.

Anthony Love

Marshall died in July 2020. Love was released from prison six months earlier.

The prosecutor, Sara VanStrydonck says Love beat Moochie for being a three-year-old. She says he beat him for potty training mistakes for instance.

VanStrydonck says Moochie was beaten so badly his injuries were the same as if he was hit by a high-speed car.

He died after bleeding to death internally, slowly.

Brean: "Have you every heard applause break out in a gallery after a sentence like that?"
Sara VanStrydonck, assistant district attorney: "Probably attempted applause but obviously emotions were extremely high."

Love’s lawyer, Peter Pullano, said Love has been in fights in jail and that life is probably in jeopardy now because Love "will go to prison as a man who killed a child. That puts him at the lowest of the low in the prison population."

"Any torture you face in prison will not come close to the torture you inflicted on this child," Judge Argento said.

This was the case where several jurors wrote letters after the verdict saying they wanted to vote for murder. The letters are full of regret, anger, sadness and explanations about the verdict they delivered.

In one letter to Moochie’s family, a juror wrote "there was no question in my mind, nor the mind of all but one of the jurors that Anthony Love is a monster who depravedly tortured a sweet tiny boy."

Brean: "Did the maximum sentence here allay any of the lingering effects from what you heard the jurors say?"

VanStrydonck: "It obviously made people feel better and I think it certainly said to me that the judge felt as though his crimes deserved a punishment that was akin to life in prison."

VanStrydonck said she wishes this is the last time she has to prosecute the death of a child.

"But we still have a lot of work to do and if anybody sat in this courtroom and saw how many people that could have but didn’t help this child, we have a lot of work to do in this community," she said.

Kei’Mere’s mother, Andrea Lipton, is facing a second-degree manslaughter charge in the death. Her trial is scheduled to begin on April 4.