Smith sentenced to life in prison for Berchtold's death

Convicted murderer Tony Smith was sentenced to life in prison Thursday by a judge who said the law does not provide for a punishment that would truly fit his crime.

That kind of punishment would require that the Lacon man be tortured the way he tortured estranged girlfriend Judith Berchtold by shooting her five times in a Sparland intersection last April, Circuit Judge Stephen Kouri said in a sentencing hearing in Marshall County Circuit Court.

“For the punishment to fit this crime, it would have to provide what the Constitution does not allow,” Kouri said.  “It would have to allow cruel and unusual punishment.”

He sentenced Smith, 40, to natural life in prison without the possibility of parole. The death penalty had not been sought, and “for practical purposes, there is no death penalty in Illinois” right now anyway, Kouri said.

“Your sentence will end when your life ends,” he told Smith.

That outcome was welcomed by Berchtold’s family and friends, many of whom were in the packed courtroom. The former Chillicothean's oldest daughter, Jamie Berchtold, 22, wrote a victim impact statement saying Smith “deserves to be shot five times while running away and die on the side of the road like our mom did.”

“Tony, you are a coward,” she said in the statement that was read in court by a relative. “And you will rot in jail and then go to hell.”

The hearing was delayed 90 minutes as Smith initially balked at leaving his jail cell. Co-defense attorney Roger Bolin said Smith wanted more time to solicit letters in his support, and Bolin requested a continuance.

Kouri instead went to the jail with the attorneys and a court reporter, and told Smith he could participate in the hearing or it would go on without him. About 20 minutes later, Smith entered the courtroom, shackled and heavily guarded, and wearing a broad smile.

The smile that Smith has often displayed during court proceedings, as well as other behavior, was singled out in a written statement given to reporters by Patrick Berchtold, the victim’s ex-husband and father of their four children.

“He sits before us today … with no remorse for what he has done. He has proven this time and time again,” Berchtold said.

Smith made a rambling five-minute statement maintaining the truth of his trial testimony that Berchtold had been shot accidentally. He also attacked Berchtold’s four children for various things, ridiculed police and prosecutors, and urged a Journal Star reporter by name to “print the truth for once.”

Public defender Patrick Murphy urged Kouri to give Smith the minimum allowable term of 45 years, while co-prosecutor Steven Nate urged the life term made possible by a jury finding that the murder was “exceptionally brutal and heinous.”

Kouri said that a review of his own trial notes showed that the word he had most often written was “torture.” Berchtold was shot four times in the torso and legs before a fifth shot to the head ended her life.

“I don’t know when you decided to kill her,” Kouri told Smith. “But I believe you intended both death and torture.”

Murphy would not comment afterward, but State’s Attorney Paul Bauer called attention to the power of the tape of the intense 911 call that Berchtold had made that night. Jurors heard her say Smith had rammed her car and shot her, and that she was dying.

“This case was what it was because Judy called 911,” Bauer said. “She in essence had the last word in this case.”

Click here to read Jamie Berchtold's victim impact statement.