The man convicted of gunning down the mother, brother and 7-year-old nephew of Academy Award-winning actress Jennifer Hudson was sentenced to life in prison Tuesday.
Hudson, who attended every day of William Balfour's trial earlier this year, sat next to her sister at the hearing and at one point dabbed her eyes with a tissue.
The sentencing hearing came a little more than two months after a jury convicted Balfour in the Oct. 24, 2008, shooting deaths of Hudson's 57-year-old mother Darnell Donerson, her 29-year-old brother Jason Hudson and her 7-year-old nephew Julian King. The judge sentenced Balfour to three terms of life in prison plus 120 years on other charges.
"You have the heart of an arctic night," Cook County Circuit Judge Charles Burns told Balfour. "Your soul is as barren as dark space."
Prosecutors portrayed Balfour, who was married to Hudson's sister Julia Hudson, as a jealous estranged husband who often stalked Julia Hudson's house after he moved out in early 2008. But Balfour's attorneys suggested that someone else committed a crime in the family's three-story house in Englewood on Chicago's South Side.
Balfour faced a mandatory life sentence. Illinois does not have the death penalty.
What a cold blooded murdering pos.
ReplyDeleteHe took away people that he knew his ex-girl friend dearly loved, what could hurt any worse than that?. I can imagine the pain. Evil is every where. So,so sad.