On this date, November 13, 2019, Matthew Nicholson was sentenced to death for murdering two siblings in front of their mother.
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Trial underway for Garfield Heights man accused of killing his girlfriend's 2 children |
Judge sentences man to death for killing Garfield Heights siblings in front of their mother
Convicted killer seen laughing during prosecutor’s closingarguments
By Chris Anderson | November 13, 2019 at 11:45 AM EST - Updated November 13 at 5:57 PM
CLEVELAND, Ohio (WOIO) - The man convicted of killing his then-girlfriend’s children was sentenced to death on Wednesday afternoon.
Judge Timothy McCormick followed the jury’s recommendation and sentenced Matthew Nicholson to the death penalty at Wednesday’s Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas hearing.
Judge McCormick took into consideration the jury’s death penalty recommendation and statements from the victims’ family before delivering his sentence.
The judge even called Nicholson a coward during sentencing on Wednesday.
According to investigators, Nicholson shot 17-year-old Manuel Lopez eight times and his sister, 19-year-old Giselle Lopez, four times in front of their mother following an argument in September 2018. Manuel attempted to break up the fight between Nicholson and his 44-year-old ex-girlfriend, but he ended up firing his weapon, hitting both murder victims as they attempted to run away.
“There can be no greater form of abuse than killing someone’s children in front of them,” said Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Michael O’Malley. “Matthew Nicholson is a monster for his barbaric actions and received the sentence he rightly deserved. He was unremorseful to the very end.”
The jury found Nicholson guilty on of two counts of aggravated murder, two counts of murder, two counts of felonious assault, and one count of attempted felonious assault.
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INTERNET SOURCE: https://www.cleveland19.com/2019/11/13/judge-delivers-sentence-man-convicted-killing-garfield-heights-siblings-after-jury-recommends-death-penalty/
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Giselle Lopez and Manuel Lopez Jr. |
Security guard gets death penalty in killings of girlfriend’s teenage children in Garfield Heights
CLEVELAND, Ohio – A judge sentenced former security guard Matthew Nicholson to death for shooting his girlfriend’s teenage children in the back last year in a fatal attack after he beat their mother in their Garfield Heights home.
Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court Judge Timothy P. McCormick handed down the sentence after a jury last month recommended Nicholson’s execution for the Sept. 5, 2018 slayings of Giselle Lopez, 19, and Manuel Lopez Jr., 17.
McCormick said he had no problem meting out the death sentence to someone he deemed “nothing more than an extreme coward" who remained unrepentant for slaying the children in front of their mother.
Nicholson, who did not speak during the hearing on the advice of his lawyers, nodded during the judge’s rebuke.
Nicholson’s mother and father told him they loved him as sheriff’s deputies led their handcuffed son out of the courtroom. With that, Nicholson became the third person condemned to death row from Cuyahoga County in 2019.
“There can be no greater form of abuse than killing someone’s children in front of them,” Prosecutor Michael O’Malley said in a statement emailed by his spokesman after the hearing. “Matthew Nicholson is a monster for his barbaric actions and received the sentence he rightly deserved.”
The jury that found Nicholson and recommended his death after a weeks-long trial packed the courtroom’s jury box on Wednesday to view the sentencing.
Nicholson attacked his girlfriend America Polanco after he discovered text messages on her cellphone that made him suspect that she was having an affair, prosecutors said at trial.
The private security officer contracted by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security grabbed his gun and fired 13 shots that killed the two teens as they tried to flee Nicholson, prosecutors said.
Giselle Lopez had her backpack on when Nicholson shot her, records say. One of the bullets lodged into a book in her backpack.
Nicholson took the stand during his trial and testified that he shot the children in self-defense. He claimed they grabbed his gun from the trunk of his car, and he feared they were going to shoot him.
Nicholson, who cried through much his testimony, portrayed himself as a victim of a plot by Polanco to turn her children against him -- a plot prosecutors said did not line up with key evidence.
Giselle Lopez had graduated from Garfield Heights High School with honors and wanted to become a pediatric nurse. Manuel Lopez Jr., who went by Manny, worked out with his friends, showed off his muscles and thought about joining the military. He settled on pursuing a career as an electrician after high school, so he didn’t have to leave his mother.
Students at the school keep seats in classrooms empty in Manny Lopez’s memory, and a poster with both of their pictures hangs on the wall of the school’s guidance office, Principal Tammy Hagar said in court Wednesday.
A victims’ advocate for the prosecutor’s office read letters written by the children’s parents that illustrated a picture of two outgoing and compassionate children.
Polanco wrote that Nicholson transformed the home that she had bought to raise her three children in into a place of fear, anxiety and mental torture. He threatened to kill her several times if she ever reported his abuse, she said.
“I just don’t want him to ever come out and hurt someone else," the letter read.
The children’s father, Manuel Lopez Sr., wrote that he came to the United States to work hard so that his kids could prosper. Nicholson took that from him.
“I believe in justice,” the father wrote. “I believe justice has been served for my family.”
Polanco’s surviving child, Roberto Lopez, said that he is doing the best he can while in the U.S. Army to be there for his mother after she watched “two-thirds of her heart be gunned down."
“Matthew murdering my brother and sister was the act of not a man, but a coward who thinks he is a man because he can overpower a woman,” he said.
Faraglia, who has been part of the prosecution teams in two of the three death penalty trials this year, said Nicholson was full of jealousy, rage and hate that drove him to cut short two young lives that were filled with promise.
“Our community, will it be safer? Time will only tell,” Faraglia said. “Because killings continue in Cuyahoga County, and they’re because of guns. This man was issued a gun and commissioned to carry a gun, and yet he took two innocent lives."
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Manuel Lopez Jr., 17, and Giselle Lopez, 19 |
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