MISSOULA, Mont., (Reuters) – A Montana bride who shoved her husband off a cliff at Glacier National Park was sentenced to 30 years in prison yesterday after a federal judge denied her request to withdraw her guilty plea to a charge of second-degree murder.
Attorneys for Jordan Graham, 22, had sought to rescind a guilty plea she entered in December, saying prosecutors were overreaching by seeking a life sentence and reneging on an agreement that they expected would involve less prison time.
But U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy denied the request at a hearing in Missoula, and later sentenced Graham to 30 years in prison with no chance for early parole, followed by five years of supervised release.
“Jordan Linn Graham didn’t have the human capacity to feel the wrongfulness of what she’d done, to seek help or even tell his (her husband’s) mother,” Molloy said.
Graham has admitted in court to pushing her husband of eight days off the edge of a cliff last July. She said that on the day he died, the newlyweds had driven to the Montana park and walked down to an embankment on the cliff face, where she told him she wasn’t happy and “wasn’t sure we should be married.”
