A Lake County Circuit judge will rule on a sentence Tuesday for Nicholette Lawrence, a Waukegan woman who pleaded guilty to murder in the beating death of her 11-year-old daughter.
Following the conclusion of Lawrence’s emotional two-day sentencing hearing Friday, Judge James Booras said he would announce his sentencing ruling Tuesday after further reviewing case materials. Lawrence faces 20 years to natural life in prison for the death of Raashanai Coley.
Assistant State’s Attorney Fred Day said that graphic testimony and images provided in court Thursday and Friday demanded that the state request a sentence of life in prison.
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Defense attorney Keith Grant, citing Lawrence’s unconditional guilty plea and an abusive childhood, said he knew she faces a long sentence but asked the judge to provide her with hope “for some small sliver of life after prison.”
The hearing concluded with a tearful statement from Lawrence, 35, to the court in which she said she took full responsibility for her actions and said that after taking numerous classes in jail, she hopes to educate other women about the factors that led to the death of Raashanai.
“I just want to say to you and everyone that I am truly sorry for what has happened,” Lawrence said. “There is not a second of the day I am not tormented by (the) pictures in my mind. I rarely sleep.
“But it’s not about me. I hope someday to help others so they don’t have to be filled with the sadness and grief of causing something so horrible to their own child.”
Grant said Lawrence was part of a classic “cycle of abuse” caused by violent, drug- and alcohol-addicted parents, having allegedly been physically and sexually abused by her own parents and others at a young age. He said she learned violence and abuse as “the norm” as a very young child, and never recovered.
Grant said there were claims that Lawrence was sexually abused as young as the age of three, and that “by the time she was 12 her mother was smoking pot with her. This was the only life she knew.”
Grant said Lawrence had a miscarriage after becoming pregnant at 13, and that she was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder as a teenager.
“If she were a soldier, we’d be saying that she saw combat; that we understand,” Grant said. “But this was just a little girl.”
Grant said that violence and abuse was so prevalent in her young life that it was normalized for her.
Day focused on the suffering of Raashanai, who he said “looked like someone out of a prison camp” when she was recovered from the home of Lawrence and her husband. Testimony from a young half-brother, police and paramedics during the hearing described a malnourished girl who was isolated, rejected by her parents and frequently beaten for at least months prior to her death.
Lawrence called 911 the evening of Sept. 5, 2014, two days after she had punched her 67-pound daughter in the stomach, a blow that perforated her insides and caused an infection that killed her, according to autopsy reports.
Police and paramedics testified Thursday that by the time they were called to the home Sept. 5, the child was no longer breathing and could not be revived.
A Waukegan paramedic testified that the girl “appeared very frail and thin. She appeared very emaciated, almost as if she were a cancer patient.” He also described her severely distended stomach due to the injury.
Autopsy photos shown in court showed apparent scars and marks all over her thin body.
In arguing for a sentence of natural life in prison, Day said the girl was killed by the person who she should have been most able to trust and count on, and that children continue to look up to and love their parents “even when that love is not returned.”
Day said Raashanai’s last words were, “You gave me too much medicine, Mommy” when Lawrence gave her daughter anti-gas medicine in an attempt to address the severe stomach problems.
“There is no metric, no measure, for what has been taken from us and Raashanai — primarily Raashanai,” Day said.
During the hearing Thursday afternoon, video clips from an iPhone recovered by Waukegan police from the home depicted the girl’s pleas and cries as her mother audibly beat her and screamed obscenities at her as Raashanai cried and pleaded for her to stop.
Those clips were recorded April 3 and 5 of 2014, less than six months before Coley died, according to Day.
Raashanai’s half-brother, who was six at the time, said in an interview with investigators that his parents told him and his sister that Raashanai was “bad,” and that they kept her locked up in a small closet in their bedroom that contained only a sink and a covered window.
The boy said Raashanai was often beaten by her mother, who sometimes used her hands and sometimes used a belt. He said a stick was also used by family members to beat Raashanai on occasion.
Prosecutors said that a belt and a stick similar to the ones described by the boy were recovered from the house.
Authorities said police received a domestic violence call to the home in 2011, reported by a neighbor, and that when officers arrived and saw marks on her face, Raashanai acknowledged she had been struck.
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The half-brother indicated in his interview that it was that incident that led to a major change in the girl’s parents’ attitude toward her.
Authorities said no evidence has been provided or found to implicate Lawrence’s husband in Raashanai’s death. Raashanai was Lawrence’s child from a former relationship, while two of Raashanai’s siblings were the children of both Lawrence and her husband, who lived in the home until Raashanai’s death.
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