A 28-year prison sentence has been ordered for the career criminal who beat, slashed and left a Prairie Village, Kan., woman for dead more than a year ago.
The attacker tried to take back his guilty plea in mid-sentencing hearing. Brian Pennington, 27, asked to remove his admission to attacking Marti Hill in September 2010, but Johnson County District Judge James Franklin Davis turned him down and issued the prison term.
The victim had hired Pennington to do odd jobs at her home. At the hearing, Hill testified she still has no idea why the man came to her home and beat her so badly that she had facial and skull fractures. The knife blade to her throat barely missed her jugular vein, and she was alive when police found her hours later.
Police had been summoned when Hill failed to appear at her job. The judge noted Pennington’s long criminal history when he imposed the sentence for attempted first-degree murder and burglary.