Muzzammil “Mo” Hassan simply wasn’t the same man Wednesday.
He appeared in court disheveled and subdued at his sentencing. Though he occasionally whispered to his lawyer, he was mostly silent and lacked the alertness and energy of his previous court appearances.
He objected to the presence of cameras in the courtroom for the first time but -- for once -- had little to say when he was given the opportunity to speak before receiving the maximum sentence of 25 years to life in state prison.
Defense lawyer E. Earl Key told Erie County Judge Thomas Franczyk that Hassan’s comments would be brief, “based on my advice.”
“If he follows it,” the judge retorted, “it will be the first time.”
But all the courtroom heard from Hassan was a short, mumbled statement. “I deeply regret that things came down to what they came down to,” he said.
Hassan, 46, was convicted Feb. 7 of second-degree murder for the gruesome stabbing and beheading of his wife, Aasiya, in their Orchard Park television studio in February 2009, a week after she filed for divorce.
Hassan’s understated behavior was offset by the powerful commentary of Franczyk, who implied that Hassan’s actions have placed him on the short path to hell.
The judge referred to a letter Hassan had sent him shortly after the jury convicted him. In it, Hassan apologized for his actions for the first time.
“He says in his letter that he tried, with utmost sincerity, to help his wife with kindness. I think he mistakes kindness for abuse,” Franczyk said. “And if it’s true that the road to perdition is paved with good intentions, then he has laid out a straight and narrow path that leads in only one direction.”
The judge, the district attorney and Hassan’s defense lawyer all commented that Hassan seems to genuinely believe much of his own story about being a battered spouse, despite a mountain of evidence to the contrary.
“Having listened to almost four days of his testimony,” Franczyk said, “I am entirely convinced that he is utterly incapable of seeing himself the way he truly is.”
He went on: “He claims also in his letter that he is an abused spouse, and I am sure that there are more men than we can imagine who are victims of domestic violence, and you have done them no favor. If ever a message was lost on the messenger, this was the case.
“Having been through two failed marriages, you knew you had an out. You had a nonviolent option. But instead of leaving, what did you do? We know what you did. ... You ambushed your unsuspecting wife, and you butchered her. Self-defense? I don’t think so.
“You also claimed that you did this out of concern for your children. Well, how ironic is it that your two little ones are now without their father and their mother, and they are now a world apart from their elder siblings? And the contempt of your two older children for you is painfully obvious.”
He quoted from comments by Hassan’s daughter, Sonia: “His selfishness has directed our lives since they began.”
Both Sonia, 20, and Michael, 19, were granted no-contact orders of protection Wednesday “because they want nothing whatsoever to do with you,” Franczyk said.
“Given the horrific nature of this crime,” he concluded, “and your persistent refusal or inability or unwillingness to accept any responsibility for it, justice demands that you receive nothing less than the maximum possible penalty.”
Hassan’s sentence means he must serve 23 years in prison, in addition to the two years he has already spent in jail, before being eligible for parole.
While Franczyk’s sentence came as no surprise, it offered a sense of relief to Aasiya’s friends and family, as well as former jurors and witnesses who came to the sentencing.
“To hear the judge say, finally, ‘No more,’ was great,” said juror Kelly Maccagnano, adding, “I think those kids deserve to get on with their lives.”
Both she and fellow juror Linda Janiga said the spirit of Aasiya will remain with them.
“She was so brave,” Janiga said. “She almost made it.”
Aasiya’s sister in South Africa, Asma Firfirey, watched a live television feed of the sentencing and said she could barely stand to look at Hassan, whom she called “a shameless creature.”
“We do not like looking at him,” she said, “and thankfully, we will never have to look at him again.”
Firfirey and others wrote to the judge asking for the maximum sentence; Hassan’s family wrote asking for mercy.
Given Hassan’s often bizarre 14-day trial, it was no surprise that Wednesday’s sentencing had its own twists.
Key -- Hassan’s fifth lawyer -- tried to represent Hassan at sentencing even though he had no retainer agreement. Franczyk denied Key’s repeated requests to delay sentencing so he could get up to speed on the case. “Here we are again, where he’s seeking to test this court’s willingness to stretch the boundaries of justice,” Franczyk said of Hassan, “and quite frankly, I have reached my limit.”
Both Key and Jeremy Schwartz, Hassan’s legal adviser at trial, spoke for him Wednesday.
Franczyk said later in an interview that he has never dealt with such a troublesome case. Though Franczyk usually keeps a single file for each criminal case over which he presides, the Hassan case fills two boxes in his office, he said.
“It was like no case I’ve ever handled before, either as a former prosecutor or as a judge,” said Franczyk, who worked as an assistant district attorney from 1982 to 1996 and has been a judge since 2007. “Everything was kind of upside down and inside out.”
At numerous points during the trial, Franczyk had to recess or temporarily set aside requests for rulings because he was confronted with such extraordinary legal issues: the multiple changes of lawyers, the decision by Hassan to represent himself midway through trial and the nonappearance of anticipated expert witnesses.
In addition, Franczyk said, he had to deal with Hassan’s requests to essentially steal the prosecution’s witnesses for his own defense. “That was also a first,” he said.
The sheer number of last-minute, repetitive e-mails and letters that Hassan wanted to enter as evidence seemed unending at times. In court Wednesday, Franczyk’s aggravation was obvious.
“I did not hear anybody say Aasiya was perfect, but by all accounts, including the defendant’s, she was a very good person,” he said. “And for the life of me, I cannot begin to understand how she was able to put up with the incessant whining, haranguing, the e-mails, the lectures, the graphs, the charts, the diagrams, the ‘dragon.’ It’s beyond me.”
“I just got the slightest hint of this in the torrent of letters the defendant has sent to this court for the better part of two years, with the endless repetition, the bubble captions, the periodic childish insults, and the insufferable, cellblock psychoanalysis.”
District Attorney Frank A. Sedita III praised Franczyk’s “righteous” statements on Hassan in court Wednesday.
“I thought his remarks were just spot on,” he said, “not only assessing the crime for what it was, but also assessing the defendant for what he is.”
He called Hassan an intelligent sociopath who will be appealing his case for the next decade without success.
“There’s a place for people like that in our society,” Sedita said, “and they call it prison.”