DAYTON — A man convicted of the same murder twice now knows how long he’ll be behind bars.
News Center 7′s Mike Campbell was in court Friday when 44-year-old Chuckie Lee was sentenced to 48 years to life in prison for the 2017 murder of 20-year-old Taylor Brandenburg.
Lee’s first conviction of Brandenburg’s murder was wiped away when he won a court of appeals decision. That meant that Brandenburg’s family had to come back for another trial, another conviction, and another sentencing. In court on Friday, they asked a judge to not let Lee see the light of day ever again.
At the sentencing, Lee said Montgomery County was “the most corrupt judicial system in the state of Ohio.”
Our crew in court said Lee ranted and raved throughout his sentencing and refuses to come to the courtroom, so the judge had to try to communicate his sentence by way of video as Lee said in the Montgomery County Jail.
“I don’t want to be here,” Lee said during the sentencing. “Whatever you’re going to give me, just give me.”
Brandenburg’s family said they have seen “nothing but aggressiveness” from Lee since his first trial.
“Five years later, he shows no remorse for what he did to our family. He took Taylor from us,” Danielle Arnett, Brandenburg’s cousin, said.
Brandenburg was babysitting for family members the night she died. When they returned home, she went outside, unaware that Lee had followed them home after an altercation with them at a bar. Lee fired at least 37 shots, hitting and killing the 20-year-old.
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“She was outside for maybe a total of 40 seconds, if that,” Arnett said.
During the sentencing Friday, Arnett told the judge that Lee has put her family through years of misery since the murder. He repeatedly fired his lawyers before his first trial, then was granted a new trial after being convicted because he claimed he was rushed into representing himself.
When the judge finally issued the ruling, the family was relieved to end the six-year ordeal. But they said it doesn’t balance out the whole in their hearts for Brandenburg.