Calling her mother a "monster," Jennifer Hoffman said Sandra Layne deserves to be in prison for fatally shooting her teen son and strongly refuted the image painted of the boy during the Detroit-area grandmother's trial, the Huffington Post reported.
The 75-year-old woman, of West Bloomfield Township, was found guilty Tuesday of second-degree murder in death of her 17-year-old grandson Jonathan Hoffman May 18, 2012.
Jennifer and her ex-husband, Michael Hoffman, said the verdict disproves the accusations against their son during Layne's testimony. Layne argued she bought a gun because she feared the teenager and his friends after he came to live with her during his senior year in high school.
"It's a final vindication for my son, to restore his good name and reputation, because over the course of the last nine months, it's been tarnished in a very cruel manner," Michael said.
Layne fired 10 shots, and struck her grandson six times. She claimed she acted in self-defense during a violent argument, but the jury disagreed. She also was convicted of using a gun during a felony and likely faces at least 14 years in prison.
Jennifer acknowledged the teen used drugs, but said she wasn't aware of any deeper conflict between him and her mother. Jonathan's mother said Layne offered to take him for his senior year of school in 2011.
"It's really hard to comprehend that your own mother could do something like this to your own child," she told reporters. "I just know that my son is in heaven, and that's a place that she'll never see."
Defense attorney Jerome Sabbota said Layne was "devastated" by the verdict and is sorrowful over her grandson's death.
"She punishes herself every day," he said. "The legal system does what the legal system does. The jury felt that it wasn't appropriate self-defense."
"My grandma shot me. I'm going to die. Help. I got shot again," Jonathan told the dispatcher in a 9-11 phone call that was aired in the courtroom.
Without the 911 call, Michael later said, "we could have had a very different result" at the trial.
