Scott Jory Brill was denied a new trial and sentenced to life in prison yesterday for killing 14-year-old Columbia resident Ashley Nicole Mason two years ago.
Ashley's mother, Crystal Mason, asked Howard Circuit Judge Dennis M. Sweeney to sentence Brill to life in prison without parole, but Sweeney, noting that Brill is only 20, opted to give the Columbia resident a life sentence, which offers a slim possibility of parole.
Brill showed little emotion when the sentence was announced, but his family said afterward that they planned to appeal the decision.
Mason, a Long Reach High School freshman, was found stabbed 34 times behind a Columbia Pizza Hut on Nov. 3, 2000.
Brill later told investigators that he was at the crime scene and had choked the teen and stabbed her once in the stomach after she was dead. Brill claimed that Frederick James Moore, 23, of Baltimore, had done the killing.
Moore and Brill had met Ashley at a party that evening. Moore was sentenced to life in prison in August.
Brill's lawyer, Joseph Murtha, argued that Brill deserved a new trial because his lawyers had not received a report from state officials. The report stated that the stab wounds to Ashley's abdomen appeared to have been made after she died, which indicated that Brill had not killed the teen.
"It would have made a difference ... in the outcome of the trial," Murtha said.
But Sweeney ruled the report was merely an opinion and would not have been introduced as evidence.
Crystal Mason pleaded with Sweeney to sentence Brill to life without parole and said that she constantly thinks about her daughter.
"When I think about all the things I [will] miss [experiencing with Ashley] ... I almost get a physical pain," the mother testified.
After the trial, Mason said she wasn't satisfied with the sentence but that "this is what I expected."
After the trial, Brill's family said that their son was innocent and did not participate in the killing.
"But I wish [Brill] would've done something [to stop the crime]," said Rick Bauman, Brill's stepfather.