Nine years later, Garcia is sentenced

Geronimo Garcia-Espinosa, who murdered a man in broad daylight on a vacant lot in northwest Clinton in 2007 and then fled to Mexico for nine years, was sentenced Monday to life in prison with the possibility of parole.
However, Assistant District Attorney Ricky McPhearson said Garcia – who is now 47 – would be at least 84 or 85 years old before he could be paroled.
To get the defendant extradited from Mexico, the District Attorney’s Office had agreed not to seek the death penalty. That left two possible punishments – life in prison without parole or life in prison with the possibility of parole.