Assurances made to Brazil on Hoerig sentencing
WARREN
Trumbull County Prosecutor Dennis Watkins assured the Brazilian government that Claudia Hoerig would not receive the death penalty or a firm term of life in prison if convicted in the ambush-style murder of her pilot-husband.
Claudia Hoerig Sentencing
Trumbull County Prosecutor Dennis Watkins assured the Brazilian government that Claudia Hoerig would not receive the death penalty or a firm term of life in prison if convicted in the ambush-style murder of her pilot-husband.
She would serve no more that 30 years, a sentencing memorandum filed in the clerk of courts office this morning states.
The prosecutor’s office is recommending a sentence of life imprisonment with parole eligibility after 25 years on Claudia Hoerig’s conviction for aggravated murder with a firearm specification.
This sentence would be consecutive to a mandatory three-year firearms specification. Her husband Karl was shot by her in their Newton Falls home.
She’d get credit for time served in Brazil while awaiting extradition to the United States and Trumbull County to stand trial this year before Judge Andrew Logan of Trumbull County Common Pleas Court (late April 2016 to early February 2018).
That would mean parole eligibility after 28 years.
After sentencing, Watkins is expected to answer questions about whether any U.S. official promised the Brazilian government that Hoerig’s sentence would not exceed the maximum of 30 years allowed in Brazil.
A Brazilian legal magazine and the British Broadcasting Corp. have reported that Brazilian officials allowed Claudia to be extradited to the United States on Jan. 17, 2018, only after the U.S. promised she would not get a life sentence if convicted. Her indictment did not allow for the possibility of the death penalty.
Watkins has thus far been tight-lipped about any deals.