She said that “you set yourself singlehandedly on trying to ruin his career, his reputation and livelihood of what I think everyone in this courtroom can agree is one of the kindest people, someone who took you in as a friend, who trusted you completely with his basketball program, with his family, and you violated that trust.
“Because there is simply no evidence to suggest that you have any insight whatsoever to the person that you were, perhaps even still are, and the harm that you caused someone that was very kind to you.” “I was hoping to find remorse and acceptance or responsibility as mitigating factors in this case, but I can’t,” Berry said. (Zarzycki contended that Bell has CTE, a claim that Pastner’s attorney Scott Palumbo disputed on the grounds that, among other things, CTE can be diagnosed only in an autopsy.) She said she also considered his mental-health issues - while acknowledging that that she believes that Bell exaggerates his medical issues and “uses them to whatever ends he wants or sees fit” - as a mitigating factor, saying that they would be impacted by jail time. She told him that she was assigning great weight to the “emotional and financial harm” caused to Pastner as an aggravating factor, especially considering that Bell orchestrated the allegations - that Pastner had sexually assaulted Bell’s girlfriend, Jennifer Pendley, more than a dozen times - not only for financial gain but also for revenge. On the other hand, they’ve caused great - if not irreparable, in some respects - harm to Mr.
Bell’s attorney, Jeremy Zarzycki, contending that his client was suffering from mental illness and that prison time would be an undue hardship that would prevent him from getting the help that he needs, had sought unsupervised probation.Īddressing Bell, who was in the courtroom, Berry said that “this is a really difficult sentencing for me on the one hand, because these are misdemeanors, and the court can’t lose sight of the fact that they are misdemeanors.
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