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HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — A Connecticut man convicted of hiring a hit man to kill his pregnant girlfriend after she refused to have an abortion was sentenced to 80 years in prison Thursday and immediately vowed to appeal.
Carlton "C.J." Bryan, 24, was sentenced in Hartford Superior Court, where a jury convicted him in May of conspiracy to commit murder and being an accessory to murder.
Prosecutors said Bryan hired his friend Matthew Allen Hall-Davis to kill 21-year-old Shamari Jenkins, who was about four-months pregnant when she was fatally shot in 2013 in Hartford as she was driving a car with Bryan in the front passenger's seat. The fetus didn't survive. The shooter fired through the back windshield.
Bryan orchestrated a plan to have Jenkins killed after he became angry when his efforts to get her to have an abortion failed, prosecutor Donna Mambrino argued.
Hall-Davis was convicted of murder and weapons charges. He apologized for the crimes. He was sentenced in May to 70 years in prison.
Bryan intends to appeal his convictions, his lawyer, Salvatore Bonanno, said. Bryan didn't speak at the sentencing hearing and didn't testify at his trial.
"He has always asserted his innocence and continues to assert his innocence," Bonanno said in a phone interview after the sentencing. "Hopefully, the appellate court upon review will reverse the decision of the jury."
Bonanno said Bryan was planning to move in with Jenkins in her East Hartford home and looked forward to the birth of the baby. He told the jury during closing arguments that it didn't make any sense that Bryan was in the car with Jenkins when she was shot, if he had planned the killing.
"My question to the jury was 'who does that?'" Bonanno said. "What if the guy misses and hits you?"
Mambrino didn't return a message seeking comment Thursday.
She told the jury during her closing argument that Bryan planned to be in the car at the time of the shooting so it would look like he also was a victim.
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This story has been corrected to show the man's girlfriend, not ex-girlfriend, was killed.
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