Jacksonville, FL: Jacksonville man's new trial gets him harsher sentence in girlfriend's beating death Killer goes from serving a 45-year sentence to life in prison

Posted: February 2, 2011 - 11:09am

By David Hunt
A Jacksonville man granted a retrial in the beating death of his girlfriend is worse off now after being sentenced to life.

Wednesday's sentencing replaces a 45-year prison term Steven Willie Montgomery received in 2007 for the murder of 23-year-old Tarnesha Ellis.

A joyous cry erupted from a crowd of Ellis' family gathered in Circuit Judge Jeff Morrow's courtroom as he told Montgomery he was unsure how he could live with himself.

Montgomery, 33, was convicted in a retrial last month of beating Ellis with a metal bar and a broomstick in 2005. Prosecutors said he even hit her with a DVD player. He chased her down in her Northside home and broke down the door to a closet where she was trying to hide. Photographs displayed for the jury showed blood all over the house.

"I'm baffled about how gruesome it was," Morrow said before sentencing Montgomery. "It was like something back in medieval times."

Montgomery's was one of a handful of cases that became eligible for retrial because of an appellate court decision that juries were not given proper instructions on manslaughter, a lesser offense that could have led to a lighter sentence.

Ellis' mother, Annie Ellis, looked at Montgomery and said, "I wish God will have mercy on his soul, but I also hope the devil welcomes him with open arms."

Montgomery apologized to the family.

"I understand that they hurt. I understand what they go through," Montgomery said. "I go through it as well."

Defense attorney Sean Espenship argued that the new sentence should not go longer than the original, but prosecutor Bernie de la Rionda said because Morrow wasn't the judge in the first trial he did not have to stick with the previous sentencing.

When Circuit Judge Michael R. Weatherby sentenced Montgomery to 45 years in 2007, he said he saw some evidence that Montgomery would feel remorse one day, but he also said Ellis' death was among the worst homicides he'd presided over.

Ellis' 3-year-old son was in the house at the time of the attack.

Montgomery told a neighbor to call 911 because he thought his girlfriend was sick. He took the boy out for ice cream, went to his aunt's house and fled to Taylor County, Ga., to lie low.

Police located and arrested him shortly after discovering Ellis' body in a bedroom of her house in the 1100 block of Carthage Drive.