Matthew is charged with capital murder for the death of 18-year-old Hannah Graham a year ago, and the first-degree murder of 20-year-old Morgan Harrington in 2009.
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The Charlottesville, Virginia, man was sentenced Friday in Fairfax for attempted capital murder and sexual assault of a woman in 2005.
Matthew was convicted of this crime in June after DNA collected from the 2014 murder of UVA student Hannah Graham matched the DNA investigators found under the Fairfax victim’s fingernails.
Consequently, the judge sentenced without the aid of a jury, instead using Matthew’s history and character descriptions to help determine the sentence, including a letter from an ex-girlfriend.
Matthew’s trial in the Graham case is set for July.
He faces up to life in prison. Public defender Robert Frank said the picture of Matthew – a state champion wrestler who received a football scholarship to Liberty University – as a gentle giant is the one that he and the defense team had come to know over the past year.
Harrington said after a court appearance by Jesse Leroy Matthew Jr.at Albemarle County Circuit Court, she approached Matthew’s mother. Before Wednesday’s hearings, Gil Harrington told reporters she wants Matthew to plead guilty in both murder cases he faces in order to spare the families involved, including his own. She said she fought back as he beat her and sexually assaulted her, many media outlets reported.
In the sentencing, Judge David Schell said Matthew’s attack was vicious and brutal and the victim suffered severely.
Hannah Graham’s parents and Morgan Harrington’s mother attended Friday’s sentencing. The skull and bones of the college sophomore were found the next month on abandoned property about 8 miles from where she was last seen in Charlottesville’s Downtown Mall area.
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His trial for that case is scheduled for October 24, 2016.
