After nearly a dozen years of freedom, Tiffany Yannika Brown has been sentenced to at least 30 years in prison for stabbing her boyfriend, despite a defense of being a battered wife.
A jury convicted Brown, 41, July 19 in the Aug. 5, 2012, stabbing death of Ollie Anderson III, her daughter’s father.
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“She has to be held accountable,” Anderson family member Tamara Martin said at Brown’s sentencing.
The family had agreed to a 10-year sentence, she said. But Brown opted to take her case to a jury, which found her guilty of felony murder.
Martin said it was “a slap in the face” to see Brown kill Anderson, then be immediately released on bond and have two more children during her time out.
“Ms. Brown never showed us no kind of remorse,” she said.
Chief Assistant District Attorney Kevin Davis said it was disheartening to see Brown “playing on her phone” and talking to family members during jury selection.
Defense attorney Dan Franck said Brown did take the charges seriously.
Molested as a child, abandoned by her mother and suffering from battered person syndrome, she only had two classes for a nursing degree left when the incident took place, he said.
Brown’s current boyfriend’s mother, Linda Reeves, told the court as a battered woman herself, she got a gun to protect herself and her children.
“I was not going to let no man stand and beat me in front of my kids,” Reeves said.
Relative Jazmine Evans said Brown had had “no trouble at all” aside from the one incident.
Brown said she’d cried for several years after the incident. “I also lost the one that I loved. It just wasn’t working,” she said.
Superior Court Judge Jesse Stone said the system had failed on several levels, including to protect Brown from domestic abuse.
With the jury’s guilty verdict, however, “the court has its hands almost tied,” Stone said.
Stone sentenced Brown to life in prison with the possibility of parole, meaning she’ll be eligible for parole in about 30 years.
