In the end, Judge Hamill handed down the same sentence to Cody Steich, the gunman responsible for the death of Ronald Luyster, as he did when sentencing Steich’s codefendant, Clarissa Luyster, yesterday; a minimum of fifteen years in the state penitentiary. The mood of the courtroom, however, could not have been more different.

“You come from a loving family, Mr. Steich,” Hamill said. “Many of the people I see in here can’t say that.”

One of those family members, Steich’s mother Bonnie, took the stand during the proceedings, talking about the tragic death of her husband Gary.

“Cody idolized his dad,” said Mrs. Steich. “He used to help his dad work on his truck...Cody’s father died in a truck accident, he was trying to save some children who were in the road when the truck went out of control.

“Cody took it hard. He wouldn’t come out of his room or eat.”

About a month after the accident, Cody wrote a letter to help him deal with his grief, in which he referred to his father as a role model and a hero. It was a necessary step in his grieving process because, as Steich’s attorney Scott Bennett demonstrated, Cody had suffered from a lifelong difficulty dealing with emotions.

“As an elementary school student, Cody was tested at the Milton Hershey Center and found to have a cluster of neurologic abnormalities,” Bennett said. “He suffers from Pervasive Developmental Disorder and by age 9 was discovered to have bad visual and perceptual motor skills. He’s simply overwhelmed by sensory information.”

This fact, in addition to an IQ and cognitive facilities that routinely tested in the bottom 5%, made him extremely susceptible to the suggestions of people he loved - a fact that Clarissa and Patricia Luyster were able to use for their benefit.

“Clarissa could get (Cody) to leave school in a minute if she called him,” Bonnie Steich said. “She told him he wasn’t allowed to have friends, he wasn’t allowed to have an eighteenth birthday party. At some point he stopped eating again, and he stopped confiding in me about the things that went on in that house.”

Before he stopped talking to her, Cody confided in his mother about Ronald Luyster’s abusive behavior toward his family.

“One of the kids, RJ, needed to have shots in both his arms; Ronald would punch the boy in the arms where the shots were until he screamed...another night Cody got a call to take Patricia to the hospital. She was pregnant again and Ronald threw her across the dining room table, and she ended up losing the baby.”

“I thought I was protecting the people I loved,” Cody said, when invited to speak in his own defense. “But I was wrong...I lost my own dad, and no one should ever have their dad taken away, whether he was good or bad. I realize what I did was wrong...I want to try and turn my life around. I want to work with troubled teenagers.”

According to Bennett, Steich has been a model prisoner since incarceration, and many in the prison, including guards and older inmates, have taken him under his wing. Bennetconcluded his defense with a quote from Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venince: ‘The quality of mercy is not strain’d....and earthly power doth then show likest God’s when mercy seasons justice.’

Hamill took all this into account when laying down his sentence.

“Your teachers and employers have praised you, and all the letters I have received testify to your naivete and capacity for compassion,” said Hamill. “I think that’s part of the reason you were led into this.”

However, Hamill noted that the Commonwealth had already extended mercy to Steich in allowing him to plead third-degree murder, rather than trying him for first.

“I take note of your intellectual challenges, and they encourage leniency...but other factors  balance that leniency....you know right from wrong, and the murder was both vicious and premeditated.

“I find this case perplexing, and I’m bewildered how a young man so known for kindness, and such a good friend, could turn into someone who is, by his own admission, a murderer.

“You said you had to stop the victim, for the sake of the younger Luyster kids...did you see yourself as a perverted savior? I don’t think you know yourself.”

In the end, a visibly moved Hamill sent Mr. Steich away for 15 - 30 years. All three defendents in the case have now been sentenced.