WHITE CO.—Danny Coston is headed to inprocessing at DOC, where he will stay for the next 53 years; effectively, the rest of his natural life.
And speaking about that 53-year sentence, after an emotional 45-minute hearing this afternoon at the courthouse in Carmi, Judge Thomas Foster, in issuing sentence, looked directly at Coston and told him point-blank: “The court is bound by an agreement. If I could give you more time, I would, because I think you deserve it.”
The agreement of which Foster was speaking was struck a month ago, when convicted murderer Danny Coston, 37, was scheduled for a last pre-trial hearing, and instead went through a stipulated bench trial. There, it had been previously agreed that Coston would be found guilty of First Degree Murder in the August 25, 2012 shooting death of Jessica Evans, 17; Second Degree Murder in the Aug. 25, 2012 shooting death of Jacob Wheeler, 22; and Criminal Sexual Assault against Evans before he shot her. The finding of guilt would come after the reading of facts into the record by the state, the defense would stipulate to them as fact, the guilty would be entered, and a term of imprisonment in Department of Corrections would be agreed upon.
Yet today, after hearing victim’s impact statements being read by the families of the victims, Foster verbalized his feelings in a nutshell.
The case has left a significant scar on the entire county, and the packed courtroom today was another indication of how deep that went. Members of the Evans, Wheeler and Coston families were seated separately in the courtroom, with benches pre-marked. Yet it made no difference when it came down to the final moments of the proceedings: There was weeping throughout, and it was indiscernible as to whether the families were weeping for their own loss, or the losses the others were most assuredly experiencing.
Kristina Suprenant, Jessica Evans’ mother, gave her own victim’s impact statement, and was able to deliver it clearly, although her voice shook with tears at times. She told of how her beautiful, talented daughter was only starting to “get her feet wet” with life and living it after having been the victim of child sex abuse, and how she (her mom), had worked with her to get her to understand that there were no monsters in the dark, so Jessi could be free to go on about her life and enjoy it.
“But in the end, she was taken away from us by a monster in the dark, dark night,” Suprenant said to a stone-faced Coston, across from whom Suprenant sat at the two tables, for the state and defense, in front of Foster. “She was alone in the dark with a monster.”
Suprenant drew sobs from the audience when she recounted what it was like to sit in the basement of a funeral home holding the hand of her daughter as her body was being embalmed, unable to see her face because it had been disfigured by gunshot wounds that Coston had inflicted.
Suprenant then read the victim’s impact statement composed by Jessi’s sister, Megan, who, visibly pregnant, sat beside her mother at the state’s table as Suprenant read the statement.
In this statement, Megan noted that what was left of her sister was in a “tiny box on my bookshelf—my sister’s ashes.” She followed this with an amazingly gentle admonition to him: “Count your blessings, Danny; count them one by one.”
Jacob Wheeler
The Wheeler family’s victim impact statement was read by White County State’s Attorney Denton Aud, who advised that it was a joint statement from the entire family (as opposed to statements being read individually by his father, Harold, or mother, Jane). During this statement, it was noted that the family had suffered a “nightmare they want to wake up from and can’t.” Jane Wheeler, it was noted, had suffered a nervous breakdown, had been hospitalized over it, and cannot work any longer; her husband Harold needs to do the shopping for her as a result, but when he goes out in public, he has to deal with questions from people about the matter. They’ve been forced to sell their home of 34 years, they said, because “Danny Coston dumped the body of their son Jacob Wheeler in their front yard” (nearly literally; when Wheeler was shot, it occurred on the county road where both the Wheelers and Coston lived; Coston pulled Jacob Wheeler’s body out of the vehicle and into a ditch at the side of the road, and he then took off with Evans in the truck).
“And we still don’t have an answer for why you did this,” the Wheeler statement read, “why you killed someone giving you a ride, how you could have looked at someone and shot him.
“I hope you spend a lot of time thinking about this,” the Wheeler statement concluded.
In the end, after discussing aggravating and mitigating factors in the case as they pertained to sentencing, and reviewing the presentence sex offender evaluation (Coston will be on the registry), Judge Foster ultimately addressed the defendant directly.
“The court accepted a negotiated agreement per the stipulated bench trial,” Foster said, referring to himself. “The families agreed and accepted the sentence.
“But there’s not much that forgives the conditions of this case,” Foster said. “I can’t think of a worse or more egregious thing that you could have done to these two young people. You executed these young people; shot them in the head. These were terrible, heinous crimes. There are no winners in this case; everybody loses. The court is bound by the agreement…but if I could give you more time, I would because I think you deserve it.”
Coston, this time wearing jail orange and shackled hand and feet throughout the hearing, was lead from the courtroom, remanded to the custody of the sheriff in order to be transported to DOC, and the hearing that began at 1 p.m. was over at 1:45.