Becky Galusha wishes she could hug her first-born child, her only daughter, Sabrina, again. She had long dreamed of the days when Sabrina would get married and start a family of her own.
But now Becky is left only with the thoughts of what could have been after Sabrina’s life was brutally taken by a stranger over a half-ounce of marijuana in spring 2017.
“Every day I look for her because I miss her,” Becky told the court Wednesday during the sentencing of Daswan Jette.
“I’ll never be able to hug her or watch her get married or have her own kids,” Becky continued through tears. “He took that from me, and I’ll never understand why.”
Last month, a jury acquitted Jette, 23, of first- and second-degree murder but convicted him of the lesser charge of manslaughter for recklessly causing Galusha’s death on the night of May 30, 2017, at the Penacook Place Apartments. For jurors to have convicted Jette of reckless second-degree murder, they would have needed to find that he also acted with “extreme indifference to the value of human life.”
Attorneys were at odds Wednesday in their interpretations of the jury’s verdict as they argued for significantly different sentences for Jette, who grew up in the foster care system in Massachusetts and has had multiple run-ins with police for violent acts. Ultimately, Judge John Kissinger Jr., who presided over the trial, sided with prosecutors in sentencing Jette to 15 to 30 years in state prison, the maximum allowable under New Hampshire law. Defense attorneys had asked for 10 to 20 years.
“There were many consequential decisions the night of Sabrina’s death. The most significant decisions were two: the defendant’s choice to bring a deadly weapon, a knife, to a marijuana deal, and his conscious decision to stab her not one time but four times, including the fatal wound that penetrated her body through her heart, several inches,” Kissinger said. “There’s no justification for those actions. There is only one person who is ultimately at fault for Sabrina’s death: the defendant.”
Prosecutors had alleged that Jette had knowingly caused Galusha’s death by fatally stabbing her during the commission of a robbery. Three key witnesses, Galusha’s friends, testified that Jette had snatched a bag of marijuana off a scale as it was being weighed on the floor of a vehicle, although his motive for doing so remained in dispute at the trial.
Conversely, Jette, who took the witness stand, told jurors he had acted in self-defense after an altercation with Galusha and her friends in a vestibule of his apartment complex, and that he never intended to, or even knew that he had, stabbed Galusha.
Standing with his hands shackled at the podium in court Wednesday, he apologized to the Galusha family for the first time.
“No matter what I say here today is going to change the fact that Sabrina is no longer with us. I’ve been waiting close to two years to apologize to the family,” Jette said as he turned to his left to look at the Galushas, who did not meet his gaze. “If there is anything the family could believe is that I’m truly sorry, and I mean that from the bottom of my heart.”
Jette said the drug deal on the night of May 30, 2017, was supposed to be simple but that he realizes he escalated the situation by showing a knife.
“I didn’t mean to kill Sabrina that night but it happened, and I apologize,” he said.
For parents Becky and Mark Galusha, the circumstances of their daughter’s death remain as puzzling and heart-wrenching today as before the three-week trial in Merrimack County Superior Court, which they faithfully attended each day of with their son, Sean, and his wife, Bia.
“I just think this whole thing is just so useless,” Mark said with Becky by his side at the podium. “Somebody dying over less than a $100 bag of marijuana. What’s this world coming to?”
Senior Assistant Attorney General Ben Agati detailed for the court Wednesday Jette’s extensive criminal past prior to his relocation to New Hampshire in spring 2017. At that time, Jette, then-20, was wanted in Massachusetts for failing to appear in court and complete a required program after his arrest for assault and battery on a child under the age of 14. A judge had placed the charge on file without a finding and ordered Jette to two years of supervision, but Jette didn’t follow through on the terms.
A few years earlier, police had arrested Jette for pulling a knife on three people near the red line in Boson. When he was arrested, he had two knives in his possession, Agati said. That case, too, was placed on file without a finding by the court.
Agati said Jette has had multiple second chances and opportunities for rehabilitation but that he has shown he is not interested in bettering himself and abiding by the law.
“The defendant is every parent’s worst nightmare: the stranger in the night who steals without reason and takes their child away from them,” he told the court.
Public defender Caroline Smith said no one can blame Jette for being taken away from his parents and forced into the foster care system, which took extensive steps to try to help him. Because he did not have a stable upbringing and a family to protect him throughout his life, she said, Jette has been and continues to be “bombarded with trauma.”
The time Jette spent at the state’s secure psychiatric unit pretrial, after questions were raised about his mental competency, was an important period for him because it allowed him to slow down and reflect on where he has come from, she said.
“He’s in that age group where things are knitting together so he can get out of the risky behavior that’s been his life of making bad choices,” Smith said, noting that she believes he is capable of breaking this cycle.
Kissinger told the court Wednesday that Jette has so much of his life ahead of him, and that he hopes Jette can truly do better. The complexities of the case at hand and Jette’s past made Wednesday’s sentencing decision a difficult one, he said.
“Anyone who has sat throughout the course of this trial knows how difficult this case was for the parties, for family members and for witnesses who were here,” he said. “In many ways, what Mr. Galusha said earlier about the case being useless and senseless, it’s hard not to see things that way.”
(Alyssa Dandrea can be reached at 369-3319 or at adan drea@cmonitor.com.)