Mall Robber Draws 41 Years

A D.C. Superior Court judge yesterday sentenced a 17-year-old District youth to 41 years in prison for acting as the ringleader in a string of armed robberies and brutal attacks that shattered the expectation of safety on the Mall.

Ryan A. Newman lifted his handcuffed hands to wipe tears from his face with his shirt sleeve, and his mother broke into choking sobs as Judge Hiram E. Puig-Lugo said he had little choice. The judge said Newman deserved no leniency because he suggested and then led the muggings and sexual assaults on unsuspecting tourists and residents in a poorly lighted section of the Mall -- with violence escalating as the weeks wore on.

"I'm not going to take your life from you, sir," Puig-Lugo told Newman. "You threw it away."

The attacks were part of a spate of crimes last spring and summer that generated national attention and led to the declaration of a citywide crime emergency. Newman and four other young men attacked a total of 12 people on three evenings in May and July 2006, including a 17-year-old girl whom Newman raped.

Prosecutors said Newman targeted the locations and intimidated his victims with a BB gun that closely resembled a semiautomatic handgun. Until the crimes took place, the Mall was considered a relatively safe area, where tourists strolled to visit many of the city's national monuments and joggers and walkers exercised at odd hours without fear.

Newman was the last to agree to talk to prosecutors. His four friends cooperated and pleaded guilty to lesser offenses. He eventually pleaded guilty in August to half of the attacks in which he allegedly participated: six counts of robbery, four counts of carrying a firearm while committing a violent crime and one count of sexual assault. His compatriots received sentences ranging from two to 26 years.

The judge said yesterday he had to protect other potential victims and send a message to others "who might try to do what you did." He rejected defense attorneys' requests to give Newman a lighter sentence that would have included intense rehabilitation and counseling.

"Everyone knows prison is hell, but what else is there?" the judge said. "I'm sorry, Mr. Newman. You've just gone too far. And there's no turning back."

There was ample pain and weeping on both sides of the court throughout the two-hour sentencing, which featured impassioned remarks from Newman, his mother and attorney, the young female victim Newman had raped, the prosecutor and the judge.

The hearing also drew a depressing portrait of Newman as a once-school-minded and timid boy whose increasing isolation from his family led to despicable choices. He had been raised by his grandmother and was often mugged in his blighted neighborhood. He had been rebuffed in recent efforts to live with his mother and began hanging with a tough crowd and doing drugs.

Prosecutors said Newman and his friends, bored and directionless, came up with the idea of leaving their Benning Road SE neighborhood to rob tourists. They accosted two couples May 25, another couple May 27, and a couple and a family of four July 11. Authorities said they took a camera from a 9-year-old boy and $5 from an 11-year-old girl.

Yesterday, Newman turned to face his rape victim in the audience to apologize, and he said he was haunted by images of what he had done to her and others. He told the judge that he had no excuses but said his acts were part of an effort to fit in with his new friends.

"I found a family I could relate to," Newman told the judge of the friends. "It just seemed like my family wasn't there."

On one side, the judge's reading of the hefty prison sentence left Newman's assembled relatives -- grandparents, aunts, uncles, sisters and brothers -- either teary or shaking their heads. Although some convicted murderers have received shorter sentences, 41 years is actually at the low end of the range of the recommended term that Newman faced under the court's sentencing guidelines. That is because he carried a firearm -- the BB gun -- in the robberies, and each firearm charge carries stiff mandatory sentences. Based on Newman's plea agreement, the court's voluntary guidelines called for a term of 39 to 83 years.

After the hearing, Newman's mother, Tanya V. Cole, had to be carried out of court by her father, Lawrence Valentine. In the hallway, she wailed to him: "It's all my fault. It's all my fault."

Valentine said that it is appalling that Newman might be a man in his 50s before he leaves prison.

"Forty-one years says it's over," Valentine said. "What does he have left?"

On the other side of the court, the 17-year-old girl Newman raped in a grassy part of the Mall stood to tell the judge that her life had been "forever changed" by the attack. Tall, her brown hair in a ponytail, her mother at her side, she said she has started going to college but had to take medication because of her stress.

"I was, before this, the most outgoing, awesome person," she said. "Now I'm easily scared. The last 10 months have been absolutely terrible for me."