"Shield" actor Michael Jace sparked some courtroom outrage Friday when he broke his silence at sentencing and claimed he didn't plan to kill his wife April Jace in May 2014.
The statement prompted April's mom Kay Henry to shake her head in disgust and walk out of the gallery saying she didn't want to listen to "this sh--."
"There is no justification for my actions on that night at all," said Jace, who was convicted of second-degree murder last month by a Los Angeles jury.
"I am profoundly sorry for the pain that I have caused everyone - everyone who knew April and loved April. There is no replacing April," he said.
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"Second-degree versus manslaughter, it doesn't matter, neither verdict brings her back. But I thought it was important (to say) that I didn't commit first-degree murder. There was no premeditated anything," he claimed. "I realize it doesn't bring her back. It doesn't help."
He trailed off during the commotion of Henry getting up and storming out of the courtroom.
"There's nothing more to say. I'm sorry. I'm sorry," he said.
Judge Robert Perry then sentenced the former FX actor to the statutory maximum of forty years to life in prison.
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Prosecutors originally charged Jace with first-degree murder, arguing he planned to kill his wife, lured her back to their house claiming he was away and shot her three times with the clear intention of killing her.
The couple's 10-year-old son testified that he saw Jace standing over April in the hallway of their pink stucco home and delivering a chilling message.
"You like to run, why don't you run to heaven," Jace said before shooting his running enthusiast wife in the legs, the boy said.
In her victim impact statement given before Jace spoke, Henry said the murder of her only daughter two years ago was a "catastrophe that would alter our family forever."
She said the grief was so intense, she couldn't return to work for two months.
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When she finally went back, she often had to get up and leave, "my weeping paralyzing me from returning to my desk."
She said her husband - who was April’s stepfather and was very close to her - became despondent in the aftermath of the murder and stopped taking his medication for hypertension and diabetes. He later suffered a debilitating stroke.
"He blamed himself," Henry said. "I believe his stroke has a direct causal relationship with this crime."
She recalled trying to console and care for April's two young sons with Jace and the relief she felt when she passed an invasive inspection and could take them home.
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April (l.) and Michael Jace in 2008.
April (l.) and Michael Jace in 2008. (BEImages/BEImages)
"My only daughter April invited me to church every Sunday, every Sunday," she said. "Since May 19, 2014, my belief in God and his role as protector has been shaken to the core."
She asked the judge to sentence Jace to the maximum.
"I often told April she was the best daughter in the world," she recalled. "She would laugh and say, 'Oh mommy.' … I say again my daughter April Denise was the best daughter in the world. My life will never be the same."
April's cousin Monique Lejay broke down in tears as she described taking in April's two "precious" young sons and raising them as her own alongside her own kids.
"They lost their mother and father and all their normality in one night," she told the court.
"They awaken through the night with nightmares of being abandoned," she said. "One wakes up at the crack of dawn before I go to work just to give me a hug because he fears I will not return home."
Jace hung his head through most of the hearing.
His lawyers maintained throughout the case that he simply snapped in the heat of passion and is filled with remorse.
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