Probation for killer leaves victim's family 'aghast'
In a move that shocked and dismayed the family of murder victim Louis Marcotte, 60-year-old George Guild, of St. Anne, was sentenced to four weekends in jail and four years of probation for killing the 76-year-old Bourbonnais man.
Guild was sentenced last week for second-degree murder by Kankakee County Judge Kathy Bradshaw-Elliott who set the jail weekends -- the first four weekends of September, October, November and December -- to commemorate the June 1, 2006 assault that killed Marcotte.
Sentencing rulings by judges cannot be appealed under Illinois law.
"I'm aghast," said Marcotte's daughter, Michelle Marcotte-Ramsey, of Kentucky. "If he would have killed a dog inhumanely and left it to bleed out, I'm sure he would have been doing prison time. Another human being and he gets probation. It's like putting a 6-year-old in a corner. I'm just -- wow -- It's bad, just terrible bad."
"We considered all the factors involved and all the evidence present in the case and essentially came to the conclusion that second-degree murder was about the best we were going to do should the case have gone to trial," said Assistant State's Attorney Bill Dickenson.
Marcotte died of blunt force trauma after being struck in the head and knocked to the ground during an altercation with Guild at a Kankakee warehouse located at 2100 E. Grinnell Road.
In the months prior to the murder Guild -- who had rented property from Marcotte -- was in a tenant-landlord battle with Marcotte and court records show Guild had filed restraining orders against him.
Still, Guild maintains that Marcotte's death was not intentional.
Kankakee County has dealt with three similar cases in the past 12 years, Dickenson said, where a blow landed during an argument resulted in a person's death. In the other two cases, people were convicted of aggravated battery and involuntary manslaughter and sentenced to probation, so Guild's second-degree murder conviction is progress, according to Dickenson.
"I'm satisfied that there was a murder conviction," he said.
But Marcotte-Ramsey said she is not. "It is not an example of the justice system that I want. It's not a good example for my boys that you can murder somebody and you get probation," she said.
Her three sons, who were close with their grandfather, are all seeing counselors because of the trauma of their grandfather's death -- one of her sons, she said, has been diagnosed with clinical depression. And she is afraid to tell her mother, Marcotte's wife, Bonnie Marcotte, who is a victim of Alzheimer's disease, about the light sentence.
Charging Guild
After being arrested in June 2006 Guild was indicted by a grand jury for first-degree murder in August 2006. First-degree murder -- considered premeditated -- carries a minimum prison sentence of 20 years. Second-degree murder is not considered premeditated and carries a minimum of four-years in prison. But prison time is not mandatory and defendants can be sentenced to probation instead.