Teen gets 6 to 12 years for drunken rape, death

"I feel like he deserved more, but I'm glad it's over. Now I can go on with my life," Ernestine Harding said after leaving a Philadelphia courtroom yesterday.

She had just witnessed the sentencing of the last of two young men who got her daughter drunk, took turns raping the girl and left her to die in her vomit.

Kierra Johnson was 15 when she died of alcohol poisoning on March 7, 2008. Her blood-alcohol level was four times the legal limit to drive, which made it impossible for her to have consented to having sex, according to Assistant District Attorney Eileen Hurley.

Johnson left behind a baby daughter and three siblings who have had a hard time coming to terms with her sudden and senseless death, Harding told Common Pleas Judge Ellen Ceisler.

Under the terms of a negotiated guilty plea, Ceisler sentenced Shareef Clemons, 18, to six to 12 years in state prison, five years of probation and a lifetime of having to register as a sex offender under the state's Megan's Law.

Co-defendant Juan Williams, 19, was sentenced by Ceisler in May to 5 to 10 years and five years of probation.

Both teens waived their rights to be tried and pleaded guilty to rape, involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, conspiracy and simple assault.

"I think the 6-to-12 is a fair sentence based on the acts of my client," said Jack McMahon, Clemons' defense attorney. "It's a tough punishment, but it's a terrible tragedy on the other end."

Though Johnson, Clemons and Williams attended the same North Philadelphia disciplinary school, she did not know them.

They met while waiting at a bus stop the morning of March 7, and decided to cut school.

Clemons, who was 16, and Williams, then 17, took Johnson to Williams' house on Crowson Street near Church Lane, East Germantown.

For hours, they drank vodka and other hard liquor until Johnson was nearly passed out on the living-room sofa.

The boys carried Johnson down to the basement, put her on a weightlifting bench and took turns raping her as she vomited and drifted in and out of consciousness.

When Williams' mother returned home he ran out the back door and Clemons told her before fleeing that he and Williams had been in the basement lifting weights. Williams' mother called for help after finding Johnson unconscious, partly clothed and dangling from the weightlifting bench.