Newlywed Who Pushed Husband Off Cliff Gets 30 Years

Jordan Linn Graham has no chance of parole
By John Johnson,  Newser Staff
Posted Mar 27, 2014 2:45 PM CDT
Newlywed Who Pushed Husband Off Cliff Gets 30 Years
Jordan Linn Graham, center, leaves the federal courthouse in Missoula, Mont., in this file photo from 2013.   (AP Photo/The Missoulian, Michael Gallacher, File)

Jordan Linn Graham will spend the next 30 years in prison without the possibility of parole for pushing her husband of eight days off a cliff, reports the Missoulian. The 22-year-old Montana woman pleaded guilty to second-degree murder during her trial last year in the apparent hope that she'd get a much lighter sentence. In fact, Graham asked to withdraw her guilty plea this morning because prosecutors were pushing for a sentence of 50 years, but the judge denied the request. Graham maintains that while she did indeed push her husband as they argued on a ledge at Glacier National Park, she didn't mean to kill him.

"I wasn't thinking about where we were," she said at the time of her guilty plea. "I just pushed." But a raft of evidence suggested otherwise, including testimony that Graham was unhappy in the marriage and wanted out already. She also lied about being with her husband at the park, recounts AP. In sentencing Graham today, the judge said he kept waiting through all the proceedings for her to show the first sign of remorse about what happened, but she never did. (More Glacier National Park stories.)

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