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Angela Pollina, the Long Island stepmom-from-hell who admitted that she compelled her 8-year-old autistic stepson to sleep in a frigid storage the night time earlier than he died, was sentenced to 25 years to life in jail on Tuesday, a report mentioned.
“My solely remorse is, Miss Pollina, they don’t have a storage,” Suffolk County Supreme Court Judge Timothy Mazzei advised Pollina in regards to the jail the place she is going to serve time. “That’s the place you should be for the remainder of your pure life.”
Judge Mazzei excoriated Pollina for her appalling therapy of little Thomas Valva and his older brother, Anthony, who survived.
“You tortured these boys — you tortured them,” he mentioned, according to Newsday.
A Long Island jury convicted Pollina, a 45-year-old former medical biller, of second-degree murder and youngster endangerment final month after she admitted that she made the boys spend an arctic January night time within the storage of the household’s Center Moriches house.
At the time of his loss of life, prosecutors mentioned Thomas’s physique temperature fell to almost 76 levels. He additionally had a head damage, sunken hips, no physique fats, alopecia, and a continual kidney an infection from holding his urine.
Pollina declined to talk at her sentencing.
Her legal professional, Matthew Tuohy, requested the judge to grant her clemency. Tuohy pointed to the truth that she had no felony report and had “lived life” earlier than she met Thomas’s father, Michael Valva.
His appeals didn’t sway prosecutors who referred to as for the utmost sentence.
Lead prosecutor Kerryan Kelly mentioned that Thomas was not surrounded by love the day he died, however as an alternative was enveloped by “pure evil,” in accordance with Newsday.
“The defendant acquired the sentence she justly deserved,” Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney mentioned afterward, in accordance with the paper.
Michael Valva, an ex-NYPD cop and Pollina’s former fiancée, was already convicted in November for his role in his son’s death. A month later, he was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison.
During Pollina’s trial, Tuohy tried fruitlessly to paint Valva as the story’s sole villain. But an avalanche of jaw-dropping testimony swamped his declarations.
One witness advised jurors that Pollina would curse and scream on the boy, and the couple mocked him for his autism.
The prosecution additionally confirmed movies of Thomas and Anthony, then 10, shivering on the cement storage ground as a result of Pollina had demanded weeks earlier that Valva take away any creature comforts from the realm.
Pollina did herself no favors when she took the stand. Some her testimony was so vile it introduced jurors to tears.
“I handled them unhealthy,” Pollina admitted to the courtroom. “I handled them evil. I put them within the storage. It was horrible. Yes, I did … I exiled them.”
And jurors gasped when Pollina said she was comfortable on the winter morning that Thomas froze to death — the day was simply “slightly chilly,” she mentioned.
She additionally admitted that she deleted incriminating footage from the household’s net of Nest cameras in her try to guard Valva, her then-beau.
In his closing arguments, Tuohy tried to inform the courtroom that Pollina was not a nasty particular person on Jan. 17, 2020 — the day Thomas died.
“She wished the boys exiled to the storage,” he advised jurors. “She acquired up and owned it, she mentioned … it was mistaken.”
“We don’t convict individuals as a result of they’re bitches,” he added, shocking the courtroom.
Kelly, the prosecutor, swatted away Pollina’s stone-faced excuses.
“[Pollina] compelled him out into the chilly! Thomas was tortured and died for the sin of being autistic,” Kelly argued.
The jury swiftly convicted her, declaring her responsible after a single day of deliberations.
