TACOMA – A Pierce County Superior Court judge startled prosecutors, sheriff’s deputies and spectators by leading a Super Bowl cheer for the Seattle Seahawks before a sentencing hearing in a manslaughter case.
After all were told to rise as Judge Beverly Grant took the bench Friday, she asked everyone in court to say, “Go Seahawks” before taking their seats. Dissatisfied with the low volume of the response, she repeated the request.
Only then did she hear statements from prosecutors, defense lawyers and relatives of the slain Tino Patricelli, as well as an apology from Steve Keo Teang, before resentencing him to 131/2 years in prison.
“The tension was very high, and I thought it would be a way of people just thinking of something else and releasing it,” Grant said afterward. “It was a diversion tactic to bring unison in the group.”
Teang, 24, of Federal Way, who pleaded guilty to first-degree manslaughter, was sentenced in January to 16 years and four months, but Grant reconsidered after his relatives said they were unable to attend for lack of space in the small courtroom.
On Friday, she also changed her mind on the sentence and accepted the joint recommendation of prosecutors and defense lawyers for a lesser prison term.
Courtroom personnel were embarrassed by the cheer, sheriff’s detective Ed Troyer and deputy prosecutor Sunni Ko said.
“It’s the most important day almost in their lives, for both families,” Ko said. “One family is seeing a son go off to prison, and one family is here to find justice for their loved one who was murdered. It’s important to them. Do you think they want to root for the Seahawks?”
Kathy Patricelli, stepmother of the 28-year-old Renton man who was fatally shot, said she didn’t join in the Seahawks cheers.
“Super Bowl Sunday is Tino’s one-year anniversary of the day he was murdered,” she said. “I was a little tiny bit offended – well, a lot offended – because this was kind of an important day for us. Cheering for the Seahawks with Steve Teang in the room, I didn’t think it was appropriate.”
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