Vance Boelter sentenced for Minnesota lawmaker shootings

Welcome back to All Day Live. Again, we want to talk more about the sentencing of the man who pled guilty in the shootings of two Minnesota lawmakers and their spouses. Vance Belter sentenced this morning in federal court to two life terms, plus 40 years in prison. That was part of the plea deal, and according to Corrin, that the defense attorney never argued for anything less than that. So let's bring in Corrin Hauger now, who is outside the federal courthouse in Minneapolis. Corrin, this hearing began, or this sentencing began at 10 o'clock. It went on for quite a while. Exactly how many people, a large number of people, spoke to give victim impact statements? How many were there? Yeah, I didn't actually count them yet, but there were several. It was members of Mark Hortman's family, members of Melissa Hortman's family, their children, the Hoffmans, all three of them. It was people that they worked with at the Capitol. It was a lot of people. I would just, off the top of my head, I would guess 15 or 16 of them, but it was a lot of very impactful victim impact statements, talking about everything from what the state of Minnesota has lost to what individuals have lost. Colin Hortman, especially, was kind of really touching on just how gray his life has become as a result of this, and how it's kind of just this little box that he has actually, at times, felt like ending his own life. It's hard for him and his wife, Alina, to kind of picture the life that they are left with now, considering they were engaged at the time, and were making plans for their wedding. And Melissa Hortman was supposed to make their wedding cake. And a lot of them, almost all of them, made sure that they mentioned that the assassin failed, that maybe he did kill a couple people. And maybe he did temporarily create a majority for Republicans, which is what his goals were, according to prosecutors. But that long term, he made the DFL stronger here. He made their ties to each other stronger. And so they did wanna make sure that they hammered it home to the assassin that he did not succeed. How emotional, I mean, just reading some of the comments, the quotes that you had posted on your Facebook feed as this went on. It shows, even in text, a lot of emotion. I've been to some of these sentencing, too, where it just gets really pretty heavy. I mean, talk about that. Yeah, I mean, from the get-go, I think the first speaker was Representative Kristen Bonner. And hers was one of the houses to which the assassin went, intending to kill her. And she was impacted by that, and she was near tears from the get-go. And a lot of these people were very emotional. The audience was emotional at times. I know I really lost it during Sophie Hortman's comments. Because she initially said that she had been working for a year plus on what she should write in a victim impact statement about what she lost in her mom and her dad. But she decided to talk about Gilbert instead of the dog. And this was a new detail to me, and it really just kind of wrecked me. Gilbert initially survived. And so Colin and Sophie, knowing that their parents were dead, had to go to the vet and deal with Gilbert. And he licked both of them, but he was barely there. And they talked to the veterinarian, and what would you do in this situation? And they had to put Gilbert down, and they told Gilbert that he was gonna be with his mom and dad. And I'm sorry, it's wrecking me again. But yeah, you can tell, it was a very emotional time in there. Yeah, and as this went on again, the sentencing here, two life sentences plus 40 years, I mean, not a surprise. This was part of the deal from the beginning. Yeah, that was the agreement. I will also mention the Hortman family, Mark Hortman's family, most of them live in North Carolina. And they came and they were very upset at the Department of Justice. They took shots at the acting attorney, General Todd Blanche, said he basically took the gutless way out. They wanted a trial and they wanted a death penalty. Can't really say that I heard that from Melissa's immediate family, but that was definitely the Hortman family's page. Mark's father, Mark's brother, really were upset at the Department of Justice. They said that Daniel Rosen, who is the attorney here who speaks for the DOJ, actually recommended a trial and a death penalty. But they said that Todd Blanche took the gutless way out. And so they wanted him hanging from a rope. That's not kind of what we heard from Melissa's immediate family. But that was an interesting thing to hear is that, at least within the family, there were some differences about what they wanted to see happen as punishment. Yeah, that's interesting because you have some families that do, as you mentioned, want a trial. They want to get all of this out there and they want the maximum possible verdicts and punishment. Others prefer this because the trial itself is so taxing and emotional that you can avoid that by getting right to this and still a pretty hefty sentence. I mean, two life sentences plus 40 years. I mean, he's never getting out of prison. No, that's right. They're consecutive. So he'd have to die to get to the second life sentence and then he'd have to die to get to his additional 40 years. And so yeah, he's getting out. There will not be parole hearings. And that is what Melissa Hortman's family wanted, was that he'd be locked up and they'd never have to worry about going to a parole hearing and kind of begging somebody to make sure that the person who killed their parents stayed in prison. So they won't have to do that. I will, at the very end, the assassin did speak briefly. I was watching him periodically throughout the hearing. He never once looked at any of the people who were giving these victim impact statements. And he, again, didn't look at them when he spoke up. But he did say that to all the people he caused pain, he is sorry. Hard to know how truthful he's being there when he won't even or can't even maybe look at them. Did he display any emotion himself as he said these things? Nope. He sat there in court in his orange jail jump suit the entire time, pretty much staring at the judge. And so I saw no emotion from him. Couldn't hear emotion in his voice. Sounded pretty straightforward for him that he wanted to say this one sentence, express remorse. But he never once looked at any of the people actually hurt. All right. And then what about the judge? The judge then usually has time then is before they hand down the sentence to make statements of their own. What happened there? Yeah, he didn't say a whole lot, but I will say he is a retired judge who has seen thousands of cases. And he said that this was the longest sentence he had ever handed down and that it was well-deserved. Okay. Coren, thanks so much. We'll check back with you later. I know you got a lot going on. Appreciate it. All right.