Abshire gets life for murder

Donning a faded orange prison jumpsuit and shackled at the hands and feet, Eric Abshire warned that if the guilty verdict against him was upheld and the recommended sentence of life in prison handed down, justice for Justine Abshire would never happen.
"Justine will never receive justice, because the person who killed her is still out there," said Abshire.
It was the first time Abshire had spoke out in his own defense in the 2006 murder of his wife. Abshire elected not to testify during a two-week long trial in Orange County Circuit Court last October.
Judge Daniel Bouton told Abshire that he believed that court's judgment against him had been a fair one and that he would follow the jury's recommendation that Eric Abshire be incarcerated for the rest of his natural life.
"The jury's finding is that this was a brutal, senseless crime," said Judge Bouton. "Everything [Justine Abshire] was and everything she hoped to be was taken."
Justine Swartz Abshire was found dead on a rural Orange County road in the early morning hours of Nov. 3, 2006. The former kindergarten teacher's death was initially investigated as a hit and run, but after a few years of evidence not matching up, the Virginia State Police determined that the scene had been staged and that Justine Abshire had been murdered.
At the conclusion of a two-week trial, an Orange County jury took less than an hour and a half to convict Eric Abshire of first degree murder.
Where much of the trial consisted of grisly details of Justine Abshire's body and the scene of fiction around where her body was found, Thursday afternoon's sentencing hearing took on the eloquence and emotion of a funeral service. Present in the courtroom in addition to the family of both Eric and Justine were a number of jury members from the trial and law enforcement personnel involved with the investigation.
In their victim impact statements, the family of Justine and the mother of Eric's children grieved the loss of the 27-year old, but also the loss of their lives and world view before the murder.
"In hindsight, I feel like I watched Justine suffer from a chronic illness inflicted by her husband, for which death was the final act," read Justine's sister Lauren Swartz on her personal observations of the Abshires’ marriage. "When it came to my own engagement, I questioned how to be a wife and have a husband, knowing [Justine] had died at the hands of her own."
Justine Abshire's mother Heidi Swartz talked about all the difficult days she had endured, beginning with the day she "received the call that is every parent's nightmare," on through the trial, but said Thursday was the most difficult of them all.
"Today is the last day I will face the man who murdered my daughter," said Swartz. "Somehow today is the hardest, because this is the last thing I can do for Justine."
Allison Crawford, with whom Eric Abshire has two daughters, ages 17 and 12, told the court that Abshire had been an intensely involved father to their children and that Justine's death had "destroyed" their family.
"Eric was very active in his children's lives; he would go with them on field trips and visit them at school," said Crawford.
At first, she said, her children were troubled by Eric and Justine's plans to marry, but Crawford encouraged them to be open-minded.
"They came to love her extremely and respect her," said Crawford, who added, "They grieve her every day of their lives."
Crawford read two letters from her daughters to the court, in which both girls express their belief that Eric did not murder Justine. In her own remarks Crawford described how the investigation and trial has impacted her.
"I grieve a loss of faith in the system and in those put in place to protect us," she said, her voice full of emotion. "My children are silent victims. They can't read an article that doesn't depict their father as a monster."
Judge Bouton denied two motions from Abshire's court-appointed attorney Charles Weber, one for the hearing to be postponed and another asking the court to find that there was not enough evidence to warrant the guilty verdict. In his decision, Judge Bouton ruled that there was "ample evidence to support a guilty ruling beyond a reasonable doubt."
Weber suggested to the court that he intended to appeal Abshire's murder conviction. A hearing for an additional charge of perjury, for which Abshire has yet to enter a plea, was set for review Feb. 23.