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Library killer gets life

CLOVIS - Nathaniel Jouett will be 51 at his earliest possible release from prison for the "monstrous acts" he committed at age 16 in a matter of minutes the afternoon of Aug. 28, 2017.

That's less time than prosecutors wanted and more than his defense counsel recommended in a searing sentencing hearing that started Monday in Curry County and concluded with a decision Friday afternoon from 5th Judicial District Judge James Hudson. During that time the court heard emotional testimony from over a dozen victims, including family members of the two employees Jouett killed that day at the Clovis-Carver Public Library.

The court gallery was full Friday in anticipation of Hudson's decision, which he had taken two days in recess to research and write. Law enforcement lined the walls of the courtroom and the jury seats took some of the overflow. The ensuing 10-page memorandum the judge presented discussed the legal factors he considered while also drawing upon 19th-century literature and Greek mythology.

"Bullets pierced the quiet, leaving in their wake tragedy, heartbreak and death," Hudson said of the 20 total shots from two handguns Jouett took from his father's safe and loosed in the library almost 18 months ago.

"Almost as if the words from Joseph Conrad's 'Heart of Darkness' had leapt off the library shelves and came to life: 'The horror, the horror.'"

Hudson repeated those words again before continuing into a metaphor of life as "a tapestry woven day by day, creating a mural of our lives."

Those murals were "stopped forever" for circulation assistant Wanda Walters and children's librarian Kristina Carter, while "a hole that can never be fully repaired or restored" remains for countless others.

"Beyond the direct victims there was a tsunami of harm across families and the community," Hudson said. "As hard as this week has been to confront this tragedy, it was necessary."

• • •

Necessary, certainly, and difficult, certainly. Between the "harrowing videos" of violence, the cross-examination of state and prosecutor witnesses, the tears on both sides of the courtroom, day after day, the proceedings asked a great deal of all involved.

"It feels like a trial," Jouett's attorney, Stephen Taylor of Albuquerque, told The News on Wednesday. District Attorney Andrea Reeb agreed, while both recognized an actual trial would have entailed yet much more: prior to Jouett's guilty plea in October, the courts had set aside the entire month of March for a jury ordeal in Roswell.

All told, Hudson sentenced Jouett to two concurrent life sentences for the murder charges and a total of 40 years concurrent for 28 additional felonies, four of which pertained to people he shot and injured during the library episode. He will be eligible for parole on the life sentences after 30 years, but the 40-year sentence on the remaining felonies exceeds that.

Jouett will have to serve at least 85 percent of those four decades, and with credit for over 536 days in custody since the shooting, he won't be eligible for parole until September of 2051.

Hudson said he had to not only consider accountability and public safety in crafting his sentence, but also Jouett's potential for rehabilitation since he was an adolescent at the time.

"Given his monstrous acts, it would be easy to just say that Nathaniel Jouett is a monster and summarily impose a sentence," he said. "The law requires that I do much more."

With that in mind, Hudson said the state's request of 96 years in prison "exceeds the Court's sentencing authority" since it amounts to life without parole.

"Even if the Court had the authority, imposing such a sentence would require that the Court find that Nathaniel Jouett is one of the rare juveniles whose crime reflects a sufficient level of 'irreparable corruption,'" Hudson said.

"Jouett does not fall in that category of juvenile."

• • •

Hudson referred to input in the previous days from psychologists and therapists who had assessed and treated Jouett in past months, analysis that looked into traumatic events of his childhood as well as a more recent history of anxiety, depression and substance abuse.

"I wish that all the hurt he has gone through, and all the pain he went through as a child, I wish he felt that he could have come to any one of us," his aunt Felicia Espinoza said in a video of family testimony presented to the court Tuesday afternoon. "That kid that you see in the paper, on the news, is not our Nathaniel."

That video, produced by University of New Mexico film students, included 20 minutes of statements mostly from Jouett's family.

His grandmother Sylvia Cohen said she believed they had all failed him, that "we all missed the signs, and now because of it, lives have been lost, including his."

Chris Jouett said his son was "a good kid, deserves every chance to continue to be a good kid," but that he "wish(ed) we would have seen more, understood more about what was going on."

Addressing the court Wednesday in his first public statement since the shooting, Nathaniel Jouett said he felt horrible and took responsibility for his actions. Crying, he apologized to the victims who had addressed him in their own statements Monday and asked for another chance.

He said he could not offer a reason why he decided to enter the library that day and open fire, and the judge echoed that point on Friday.

"There is one question that I do not ask, and that is, 'Why?' I do not ask because there is no why that would ever suffice. No one will leave with that question answered," Hudson said.

"It is important to recognize what this sentence does and what, unfortunately, it cannot do. ... It cannot bring back Wanda or Kristina or restart the loom of the tapestry of their lives. It cannot heal wounds or mend a broken spirit and remove the hole from the tapestry in all the others' tapestries."

The judge then addressed the victims directly.

"Alexis Molina, you aren't going to get over it," he said to the young woman whose brother was shot in the hand and who herself was shot three times during the incident. "No one is. No one should tell you that or expect that of you. But I do believe that you can move forward. I believe that each of you can. Maybe, just maybe, the completion of this case can help you do that."

• • •

Reactions Friday to Hudson's decision were mixed.

Howard Jones, who was shot in the arm, told The News he was "disgusted." Jones, who has since moved back to California, said he wanted Jouett to serve life without parole, not for himself but for Jones' two children who were in the library with him at the time.

Clovis Police Chief Doug Ford told The News that he would have liked to see Jouett serve more time given the impact his actions had on the community.

District Attorney Reeb said: "I think some of them (shooting victims) were disappointed. I think they wanted a lot more time. Of course, we wanted a longer sentence, a lengthier sentence.

"... The thing about today was at least that I hope it gave the victims some finality and closure. The length of the sentence cannot bring back what actually occurred."

Reeb said she was still concerned that Jouett might not be rehabilitated come 2051, if he is released on parole that time. That's a big "if," too, she added, since it will be subject to review and determination at that time and doesn't happen often.

"This case was obviously the biggest tragedy and mass shooting that we saw in this district," Reeb told The News. "So it's somehow hard to correlate why Nathaniel Jouett was able to receive so much less of a sentence than a lot of other convicted murderers in Roosevelt County and Curry County. All I can assume is it's because he was a juvenile, and the judge took that into account."

Taylor said Friday he respected the court's decision and considered the sentence a fair one.

"My hope was that he would give Nathaniel a meaningful opportunity to parole, and under this sentence I think that that's the case," he said.

As for Jouett, he cried at various times during the week in court but was stoic during his sentencing Friday.

"I can't really share much about his reaction, partly because of confidentiality, but also because I think right now it's still a period of processing what happened, and understanding it," Taylor said.

"It's not real clear what his thoughts are, and frankly it's not real clear what my own thoughts are. It takes some time to think about it ... It's been a long year and a half."

 

 
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