Sentence: Life without parole

      The jury that convicted former police officer Ron Mortensen of first-degree murder heeded prosecutors' requests Thursday to send the community a message by handing down the harshest possible penalty.
      "Tell him that 'You, Mr. Mortensen, we hold to a higher standard because as a police officer you hold yourself to a higher standard,' " Deputy District Attorney Gary Guymon said.
      After less than three hours of deliberation, the jury came back with a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole.
      The other option the panel had after the afternoon penalty hearing would have been imposing two consecutive life sentences with the possibility of parole. That would have made Mortensen eligible for freedom in 40 years. Instead, he will die in prison unless the conviction is overturned on appeal.
      Mortensen was convicted Wednesday of killing 21-year-old Daniel Mendoza in a Dec. 28 drive-by shooting. The law did not allow prosecutors to seek the death penalty for the former 31-year-old rookie cop, Chief Deputy District Attorney William Koot told jurors.
      "No one is asking in this case for an eye for eye," Koot said. "But isn't it ironic that if the roles here would be reversed the death penalty would be available to someone who kills a police officer?"
      The harshest possible penalty in this case would go a long way toward softening that irony and healing the wounds of a community whose trust in the justice system is shaken to its roots by the actions of a single officer, Koot argued.
      "Consider the residual damage done by Ronald Mortensen," Koot said. "If Mr. Mortensen has to be made an object lesson, then so be it."
      As for feeling sorry for Mortensen or his family, Koot stressed that "painful as incarceration is going to be for Mr. Mortensen, how painful is it to lose a son, a brother, forever. At least in prison there is hope."
      What Daniel Mendoza wanted most was to marry the love of his life and to start a family, his father Ramon Mendoza told the court. Mendoza described his son as a dreamer, "full of illusions," and plans to save money, buy a home, finish high school, help support his grandmother and younger brothers.
      Now that family is "pretty much destroyed inside," said Mendoza, who spoke to the jury through an interpreter. "We did not know what destiny had in store for us."
      The devastation to Mortensen's family is equally complete, family members testified.
      Mortensen maintained his innocence during the trial and testified that Christopher Brady, another former officer, actually fired the shots that killed Mendoza in an alley behind McKellar Circle.
      Brady, 25, turned himself in to police nearly two days after the shooting. On the witness stand he testified that the two were out together celebrating Mortensen's birthday and decided to take a drunken joyride to harass the kind of "nasty" people police officers often confront while on duty.
      Brady claimed, and eyewitnesses confirmed, that Mortensen spotted a group of young men, summoned them to the truck, then fired six shots out the passenger window. Brady has not been charged with any crime. During the trial, defense attorney Frank Cremen alleged that Brady was being protected from prosecution because his father is a veteran Las Vegas detective.
      As her husband showed emotion for the first time during the nearly three weeks of trial, Zoe Mortensen tried to tell the jury of the man she knew.
      "My man is not that kind of man," she told the panel that dubbed him a murderer. "He's the nicest guy anyone would ever meet in the street."
      The couple has a 2-year-old daughter and her husband has worked two jobs consistently to support the family, she continued. "I used to refer to him as my officer and gentleman. He's a perfect gentleman.
      "My husband is being framed," she sobbed. "There's so much you don't know."
      Cremen tried to introduce jurors to Mortensen as the man his family knew, in part by presenting the glowing recommendations he had received from supervisors when he served first in the U.S. Army and later in the Nevada National Guard.
      "When you look at the man you are about to punish, look at his whole life," Cremen urged. "There's nothing in his life, nothing he has ever done, that shows he was capable of doing what you have determined he has done."
      Mortensen will be formally sentenced July 17 by District Judge Joseph Pavlikowski.