Dutra sentenced to 11 years in prison

As former jurors clapped Monday, a judge gave Sarah Dutra the maximum sentence of 11 years in state prison for the manslaughter of her boss, Woodbridge resident Larry McNabney.

Her recently cut hair apparently crimped, 22-year-old Dutra stared ahead as San Joaquin County Superior Court Judge Bernard J. Garber said he thought that if Dutra were released on probation, she would commit another offense.

Arrested more than a year ago in connection with the murder of McNabney, a Sacramento attorney, Dutra could have faced life in prison without parole had a 12-member jury found her guilty of murder.

Last month, the jurors instead found her guilty of manslaughter, though many of them later said outside court Monday that they wished she had been convicted of murder.

"The defendant will eventually be out, no matter what," Garber said.

"It has struck me that the jury has given her a second chance," he added, then turned and addressed Dutra directly as he said, "And Miss Dutra, I urge you to take advantage of that."

Tavia Williams, right, daughter of slain Woodbridge attorney Larry McNabney, hugs Kim Petersen, executive director of the Carole Sund/Carrington Foundation, at the San Joaquin County courthouse Monday in Stockton after the sentencing of Sarah Dutra. Dutra, convicted of manslaughter in the killing of McNabney, was given the maximum sentence of 11 years. (AP Photo/Clifford Oto)

Dutra showed little emotion during the sentencing that lasted about an hour and a half. Before the court session began, her father said Dutra had resigned herself to the fact that she could spend 11 years in prison.

Monday's sentencing closed one chapter in the life of McNabney's family, his grown daughter, Tavia Williams, said outside court.

"It's closed this chapter, but there are so many things we haven't been able to deal with because of the trial -- some of the grieving," she said.

McNabney was last seen alive at a September 2001 horse show in Southern California, and for the next several months, his wife and Dutra continued to operate his law office by practicing signing his name and then forging it on checks.

The papers on which they practiced were retrieved, and Garber said Monday that he had never before seen evidence like that.

Only later would authorities learn that the woman who called herself Elisa McNabney was actually Laren Sims, a wanted fugitive with a long list of aliases.

Just days after that September horse show, Sims, with Dutra's help, sold his truck for $27,500. His horse was later sold, and evidence introduced in the two-month trial showed that a client's settlement checks totaling $150,000 were cashed but never given to the client.

At Monday's sentencing, Garber recommended that Dutra pay that amount in restitution to Joyce Carter, the woman who should have received the money.

Near the end of 2001, a McNabney law firm employee who had never even seen McNabney filed a missing persons report.

In January 2002, Sims vanished, and authorities launched a nationwide search for the woman who had no real identification of her own. She was arrested two months later in Florida, where she confessed to the murder, implicated Dutra in the crime and then hanged herself in jail.

On Feb. 5, 2002, farm workers found McNabney's body buried in a vineyard east of Lodi.

Larry McNabney

Tests revealed that McNabney had been given a fatal dose of horse tranquilizer, and investigators began to piece together the events from months earlier.

In videotaped interviews with detectives, Dutra told how she and Sims put a drugged McNabney into a wheelchair and rolled him out of a Southern California hotel on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001.

As the country was in chaos from terrorist acts on the East Coast, the three drove to Yosemite, where Dutra tried to dig a hole for McNabney, but the ground was too hard, she told authorities. The two women then drove to Woodbridge, where they took the attorney into his home.

The next morning, the two dragged McNabney's body down the stairs and into the garage, where they stuffed him into a refrigerator and sealed it shut with duct tape. Jurors watched that videotape earlier this year during the trial.

"That, to me, was the defining moment in the whole trial," Garber said as he reviewed Dutra's probation report in court before he sentenced her.

More than two months later, Dutra called McNabney's 26-year-old son, Joe McNabney, and invited him to the Woodbridge home to party with Dutra and Sims. Unbeknownst to him, his father's body was still in the garage, and family members still wonder what would have happened if Joe McNabney had gone to the Woodbridge home that night.

"If that's not callousness, I don't know what is. Probation is denied," Garber said.

Dutra's Sacramento attorney, Kevin Clymo, had asked that she be given probation, citing the fact that she has no previous record. In addition, she was an honor student at Vacaville High School and made the Dean's honor list while studying art at California State University, Sacramento.

In the end, though, the former drill team member was sentenced to 11 years in prison, a sentence that most of the jurors didn't think was enough.

"She got away with murder," said Lodi resident Dianne Miller, who was an alternate juror in the trial.

Stockton alternate juror Tom Congrave, who brought his son to watch the sentencing, agreed.

"What can I do? I did what I was supposed to," he said, adding that he would have given Dutra second-degree murder, which carries a sentence of 15 years to life.

While most jurors were pushing for a second-degree murder conviction, one juror held out during deliberations, arguing for a lesser sentence.

"I don't know what trial he was watching," said Jesse Mendoza, an alternate juror from Manteca who also thought a second-degree murder conviction was more appropriate.

Eight jurors and alternate jurors attended Monday's sentencing, and while some of them stood back quietly and avoided media cameras, most made sure they hugged McNabney's family before leaving.

"You will always be in our thoughts," alternate juror Kendall Rowley, of Stockton, told Williams as the two women hugged, tears in their eyes.

Deputy District Attorney Thomas Testa was "a little disappointed overall," though he said he respected the jury's decision.

"If I'd had 12 women on that jury, I would have gotten a murder conviction," Testa said.

With credit for 458 days already spent in jail, Dutra will likely spend more than nine years in state prison before she is released.

Paperwork to transfer her to a state women's prison will probably not be finished for at least two weeks, Sheriff's spokeswoman Nellie Stone said. But once the papers are done, Dutra will be transferred immediately.

Dutra showed no emotion at her Monday court appearance, even after Garber denied Clymo's motion for a new trial and said that her probation report was "negative."

According to the report, Dutra laughed and giggled while talking to the probation officer, Garber said.

Dutra and her family did not address the court during Monday's sentencing, though numerous letters from friends and family were sent to the judge, Clymo said. They quickly left the courtroom after sentencing, and Clymo did not return a message left at his office Monday.

Williams, joined by her 13-year-old daughter, read a statement about the loss of her father, directing part of it toward Dutra.

"There was never evidence that you cared. ... You sat and watched and were involved in the taking of a human life," she told Dutra, who did not look at Williams.

"It pains me that you were one of the last people to see my dad alive -- that you robbed me of that," Williams added.

Her mother, JoDee Bebout, who attended every day of the trial with her son and daughter, also spoke, asking Garber to give Dutra the maximum punishment, as did Testa.

"Throw the book at Sarah Elizabeth Dutra. Give her 11 years, 8 months, and then justice will be half-served," Testa said to the judge.

And Garber did that, though he stayed the extra 8-month sentence for accessory to murder, explaining that someone cannot serve two sentences for one crime.

Dutra will begin serving her sentence immediately, and she has 60 days to file an appeal.

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