James Carter II was sentenced to 60 years in prison on Friday for stabbing his ex-girlfriend to death and will be eligible for parole after 25 years.
Carter was convicted of killing Tiana Notice, a 25-year-old University of Hartford graduate student outside her Plainville apartment on Valentine’s Day in 2009.
She had been stabbed about 20 times and was barely alive when police arrived.
Notice died two hours later at Hartford Hospital. It was just about a week after her 25th birthday.
Her father and mother tearfully addressed the judge during the sentencing hearing and asked him to sentence Carter to the maximum.
"I identified her body and I'll never forget what I saw, my daughter laying on a gurney all butchered up," said Alvin Notice, Tiana's father. "I hope he will spend the rest of his life in prison each and every day thinking about what he has done."
"We were truly and wonderfully blessed to have known her," said Kathy Lewis, Tiana's mother. "To me it feels like my heart is gone and it will never be made whole again until I'm reunited with Tiana in heaven."
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Carter chose not to attend the sentencing hearing.
As he handed down the 60 year prison sentence, the judge called the crime senseless and violent.
Outside court, Notice's father held up an apology letter Carter sent to the family and questioned his sincerity.
"If a person was remorseful he'd be out there saying to the family, 'I apologize,'" said Notice. "This guy's an evil person and he deserves what he's getting."
One month before she was killed, Notice had taken out a restraining order on Carter and unsuccessfully sought help from local police departments several times because she feared for her life.
After her death, Notice's father launched a foundation in her name and pushed for tougher domestic violence laws in Connecticut. State lawmakers have since passed a law that tracks high-risk domestic violence offenders via GPS.
