Knowles sentenced to 60 years for murder of Megan Meriwether

Joseph Knowles and his girlfriend plotted to rob Megan Meriwether because she was a smaller, slender female, attorneys said Tuesday.

Meriwether, an 18-year-old who thought she was going to be selling marijuana to Knowles and Brianna Coombs, refused to be marginalized and produced a knife to stand her ground. But Knowles turned that knife on Meriwether and killed her with it in an alley in Great Falls on Sept. 23, 2016.

“Sometimes, smaller people try to protect themselves,” Judge John Larson told Knowles at his sentencing hearing on Tuesday. “When you use a knife on someone, that is incredibly personal. They bleed, and they cry. Leaving them on the ground, bleeding and crying is totally inhuman.”

Larson sentenced Knowles to 60 years in Montana State Prison on Tuesday afternoon in Cascade County District Court. The sentencing matched the recommendation prosecutors made in a plea deal in October, sparing Knowles a jury trial.

Meriwether’s mother, Donna Nelson, had asked the judge to sentence Knowles to the maximum, 100 years, in her statement to the court Tuesday afternoon. Standing in front of a gallery overflowing with supporters from both sides, she barely spoke her first words before she was sobbing.

"We'll miss the excitement of helping to choose a college that would have boosted her into a career of her choice; watching her father walk her down the aisle, and grandchildren to bring into this world," she said. "Friends can only imagine what she felt like, laying there, obscenities being yelled down on her while she lay there to die."

"The harshest punishment is what we're asking, your honor. Not out of revenge, but for justice."

Knowles' attorneys asked Larson to suspend 30 years from the prosecutors' recommendation. Knowles spoke for the first time in a public hearing, offering an apology to Meriwether's family. 

"I'd just like to say I am sorry," he said. He had spent the entirety of the hearing looking down at the defendant's table and now looked at the judge. "Like, truly. I know the Meriwether family probably won't believe that, but I'm seriously sorry about all of this. That's all."

In testimony, Dr. Theresa Reed said she saw Knowles, 17, as someone with "greater potential for rehabilitation than an adult offender." In evaluating Knowles, she also spoke with members of his family, the family therapist, and his mother's probation officer. 

Reed said Knowles' mental development was arrested because of the gloomy conditions of his childhood. At one point, he had found his own father in a methamphetamine overdose, and his father had later died from "drug-related causes." He had been in several foster homes, attended 10 different elementary schools, and he and his mother were often evicted from residences, Reed said.

"He had no control over these adverse conditions," Reed said. "Both parents modeled substance abuse and criminal activity."

Knowles' outbursts had extended past the September killing of Meriwether. During a hearing in May, a juvenile detention administrator testified that Knowles had been in several incidents: fights, hurling racial slurs at inmates and jail staff and, in one case, he was pepper-sprayed as staff attempted to break up a fight at the jail. 

But Adam Jerome, a teacher at the juvenile detention facility, testified Tuesday about Knowles' progress. In recent months, Knowles had become more engaged in schoolwork, even tutoring other incarcerated students, he said. Knowles also asked to be removed from an area when he felt another altercation boiling up. 

"The progress I've seen in the past few months leads me to believe there is room for much more positive growth in Joey," Jerome said. 

Jerome's testimony and other indicators of progress made the difference in Knowles' sentence, Larson said. If he had not shown any signs of improvement while awaiting trial, "I would not have hesitated to give you a much longer sentence," he said. 

Larson hardly waited for a breath to pass between Knowles' apology and his delivery of the sentence. He took a lecturing tone against Knowles, whose case he called one of those most serious juvenile offenses he's seen in nearly two decades on the bench.

"Two bigger folks taking advantage of a smaller person for your own personal, greedy needs," he said, noting Knowles did call law enforcement long after Meriwether's body was found in the alley, "The time to call would have been as you left, so someone could have helped her. But again, for your own needs, you made this call."

Brianna Coombs, Knowles' co-defendant in the case, is scheduled to be sentenced for the robbery on Jan. 19. Prosecutors have recommended she be sentenced to 30 years in prison.

Knowles received 452 days credit for time served since he was arrested, meaning he will be eligible for parole in about 14 years. 

"That should give some time for the community to heal," Larson said. "The family won't completely heal, but if they see you making progress, they'll realize the system is working."

After the hearing, Nelson said she wasn't relieved by the sentence, albeit the wound of her daughter's death was still too fresh for relief, she said. She thanked the law enforcement, prosecutors and judges for their work on the case.