WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. (1010 WINS) -- A homeless man who stabbed a woman to death in a mall parking lot and said he did it because she was white was sentenced Monday to 25 years to life in prison by a judge who called him ``the face of evil.''
State Supreme Court Justice Lester Adler imposed the maximum sentence for murder as a hate crime on Phillip Grant, 44, who has already spent 24 years in prison for rape and attempted assault. The judge also specified that future parole boards hear his recommendation: ``I do not believe you deserve one second less than the rest of your life in jail.''
``You, Mr. Grant, represent the face of evil,'' he said.
Grant showed no reaction as sentence was imposed. Just as he was leaving the courtroom, his hands cuffed behind him, one of the victim's sons, Jonathan Russo, shouted at him, ``Disgusting animal!''
Grant, 44, who is black, was convicted in July of killing Concetta Russo-Carriero, 56, a legal secretary who was stabbed twice in the heart at lunch hour on June 29, 2005, in the parking garage of the Galleria mall in downtown White Plains.
``She met your specifications for hate,'' the judge told Grant. ``She was white.''
Captured just minutes after the killing, Grant quickly admitted his guilt, led police to a bloody knife and sat for a videotaped confession in which he ranted about a race war, saying of his victim, ``As long as she had blond hair and blue eyes, she had to die.''
He added that if he'd had a gun, ``There'd be a lot of dead white people on the streets of White Plains.''
The case spurred calls for a civil commitment law that could keep violent sex offenders off the streets even after their prison time is served. Bills including one called ``Connie's Law'' are pending in the state Legislature.
Letters written to the judge by the victim's two sons, whose father died in 1989, were read at the sentencing by the prosecutor, Timothy Ward. The judge ordered Grant to stand while he listened.
``My memories, though much too short, will fill my heart and mind for the rest of my days,'' wrote Jonathan Russo, 29. He called Grant ``a vicious beast.''
His younger brother, Michael Russo, 24, who lived with their mother in White Plains, said: ``What was once a warm and loving home is now a cold house ... empty, lonely and sad.''
John Carriero, who married Concetta Russo in 1993, said through tears after the sentencing, ``The main thing is it's over.''
Defense attorney Eugene Traynor had meticulously challenged police procedure and the judge's rulings throughout the trial, claiming that the wrong man had been arrested, that Grant's rights had been abused and that the confession was invalid.
But the jurors, who watched the videotape twice, took just 4{ hours to convict Grant, a convicted rapist who had served his entire sentence, refused mental health treatment and was free to roam the streets.
Traynor said Monday he plans an appeal on grounds that the ``inflammatory context'' of the trial denied Grant due process and that the hate-crime law is unconstitutional.
The hate-crime law provides for a longer prison term if the minimum sentence for murder is imposed; it has no effect on sentencing when the maximum is imposed.
Russo-Carriero's family has sued White Plains and Westchester County, demanding $15 million in compensation for her suffering, death and ``pre-death terror'' in the municipal garage.
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