Sentencing in cliff death case set for Monday
By JOHN PEPIN, Journal Munising BureauMUNISING — Thomas David Richardson is set to be sentenced for his first-degree murder conviction Monday in Alger County Circuit Court in Munising.
Richardson, 46, of downstate McBain was found guilty April 16, at the close of a six-week jury trial, of killing his 43-year-old wife Juanita by causing her to fall from a 140-foot cliff at Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore on June 22, 2006.
Through his defense attorneys, Richardson professed his innocence, arguing his wife’s death was a terrible accident and not a homicide.
Witness testimony during the trial revealed that Richardson had told police three different stories of what happened to his wife.
Those renditions of her death changed from being an accident Richardson didn’t see because he had gone to a park bathroom, to a suicide he witnessed, to an accidental fall Richardson claimed he watched take place.
Richardson is scheduled to be sentenced at 11 a.m. by Judge William Carmody. The crime of first-degree murder carries a mandatory sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Defense attorneys Karl Numinen and Jason Elmore had already begun researching the basis for a possible appeal of the conviction before the jury’s verdict was announced.
Court laws require a defendant to be sentenced before an appeal may be filed.
Richardson had been lodged in the Alger County Jail since his Feb. 6, 2007 arrest. During the trial, Richardson was in the Schoolcraft County Jail in Manistique.
After Monday’s sentencing hearing, Richardson will be transferred to the Marquette Branch Prison. From there, he will be brought to downstate Jackson Prison within days and then later assigned a prison where he will begin serving his sentence.
An appeal to the conviction will likely take at least a year to be heard by the Michigan Court of Appeals, attorneys said.
