Two sentencings

Lost in Friday's commotion about the guilty verdict in the kidnap-sex assault trial of West Philadelphia teacher aide Christina Regusters were sentencings in two other cases I've written about:

The sentence was 55 to 110 years but at age 57, career criminal Kevin Green should consider it life.

Green was found guilty by a Philadelphia Common Pleas Court jury on July 10 for the Aug. 10, 2013, home invasion robbery of Jose "Tony" Torres and wife Elizabeth Varela, at their home in the 3500 block of North Fifth Street, on the edge of Kensington.

According to trial testimony, Green and exotic dancer Charda Martin Gilyard, 26, went to the Torres-Varela house posing as prospective tenants for one of Torres' rental properties and forced their way inside. Green, brandishing a .38-caliber revolver, terrorized Varela and her autistic son, Joshua, 12, before fleeing with $7,713 in cash.

They didn't get far.

A neighbor spotted the pair running from the house - Green with a wrapped block of bills under an arm, Gilyard awkwardly sprinting in stilettos - and chased them.

Gilyard got a half-dozen blocks before she was arrested in the 900 block of Sedgley Street. Green, who had been on parole just 10 months, made it about twice as far before he was arrested near Broad and Clearfield Streets.

Green's adult criminal career began at age 18 in 1975. By the late 1980s, he was in one of the city's most feared drug gangs, involved in a shooting war with the more-feared "Junior Black Mafia."

Green was 36 when he escaped a life sentence for murder - he got seven to 15 years - in the notorious 1989 shooting of Donald Branch, a Cheltenham computer software expert dining at Tobin's Inn in West Oak Lane. Branch was an innocent man whom Green's associates mistook for JBM leader Aaron Jones. Luckily for Green, his gang left him behind when he took too long to get an Uzi for the planned hit.

Green's misbehavior led to a string of parole violations that cost him much of the next three decades behind bars.

At trial, Green regularly interrupted defense attorney lawyer William J. Ciancaglini and Judge Charles Ehrlich with objections based on Moorish American and "sovereign citizen" political theory. He insisted the court and law were unconstitutional and did not apply to him and said his court-appointed lawyer had no right to represent him.

Not surprisingly, Green did not go quietly. According to Assistant District Attorney Jill Fertel, Green told Ehrlich, "I'll see you in tort, as a defendant," an apparent reference to a lawsuit he has filed based on Moorish American legal theory.

Green's accomplice, Gilyard, who had pleaded guilty and argued she did not know Green was planning a robbery, was sentenced by Ehrlich to 9 to 18 years in prison.

The former chief disciplinarian at Northeast High School – found guilty June 9 by a Philadelphia Common Pleas Court jury of having sex with a troubled 17-year-old girl student – was sentenced to 1-1/2 to 3 years in prison by Judge Diana L. Anhalt.

Mark Preston Williams, 58, will be on four years probation when he leaves prison and must register with authorities as a convicted sex offender under Pennsylvania's Megan's Law, according to Assistant District Attorney Kelly Harrell.

Williams, who testified at trial that the girl was lying, told Anhalt, "The truth will come out."

Harrell said the judge's sentenced was halfway between her request for 3 to 6 years in prison and defense attorney Samuel C. Stretton's request for probation.

There was no DNA evidence incriminating Williams; the jury appeared to believe the student's testimony against the veteran educator.

Williams was arrested two months after he took the girl out for a meal on the Martin Luther King holiday and then stopped by his Exton home, where he was accused of having sex with her.

In testimony, Williams confirmed the girl's account except for having sex with her.

Harrell said the girl's sister overheard a phone conversation between her sister and Williams and told her mother, who reported Williams to police.