Amanda Brown Photo courtesy Jeanine Brown

Amanda Brown was planning to leave her boyfriend in 2018 until she learned they were expecting another baby.

Their relationship was unhealthy, Brown’s mother said. But she wanted her children to know their father. Her dad died when she was 7 years old.

“Family was important to her and she desperately wanted that for her children,” Jeanine Brown tearfully told a judge Friday as Brown’s boyfriend was sentenced to 30 years in state prison for her death.

Brandon Libby, 37, likely will be released sooner because he has already served more than three years in jail waiting for trial. He was also ordered to pay $22,000 in restitution to the two young children he shared with Brown, who was 30 when prosecutors say he shot her the night of June 14, 2021.

Libby was originally charged with murder in Brown’s death. He pleaded to the lesser charge, still a Class A crime, in December after his murder trial ended in a hung jury.

He has said he was trying to wrestle the gun away from Brown during an argument when it went off, shooting her in the stomach. He later told detectives he slept in the bed beside her body before leaving with their kids the next morning. It wasn’t until two days later, after an hours-long police standoff, that he told this to detectives.

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Brandon Libby enters the courtroom in Portland Friday for his sentencing hearing. In a deal with prosecutors, Libby pled guilty to manslaughter and agreed to serve 30 years for the 2021 death of his girlfriend, Amanda Brown. Gregory Rec/Portland Press Herald

During his sentencing hearing Friday in Cumberland County Superior Court, Brown’s family described Libby as a dishonest partner to Brown, with whom he fought often. A state prosecutor said they consider this a domestic violence homicide.

“You killed Amanda,” her mother Jeanine Brown said in court. “It doesn’t matter that you feel bad, it doesn’t matter that you called it an accident. What matters is that you killed Amanda.”

When it was his turn to speak, Libby apologized to Brown’s family.

“I just want to say I’m sorry to everyone,” he said, taking a long pause before returning to his seat.

Jeanine Brown now has custody of the couple’s children, who were 4 and 2 years old when Brown died. Libby’s parental rights were terminated, his lawyers said.

Their oldest child was less than 20 feet from where Brown was killed, her mother said.

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Justice Thomas McKeon talks to jurors in December after they first announced that they could not reach an unanimous decision in the Brandon Libby trial at Cumberland County Superior Court in Portland. Gregory Rec/Portland Press Herald

“Anytime somebody gets a gun in a family quarrel, this is what happens,” said Superior Court Justice Thomas McKeon, who sentenced Libby. “This is why the state tries so hard to prosecute domestic violence. …  No one will ever know what happened in that bedroom that day, but … his decisions that day have had an enormous impact, and did in fact take Amanda away.”

A LOVING MOM

Brown was a children’s social worker. Even after long and difficult workdays, her family said, she would go home and remain upbeat for her children.

“She’s the bar I hold myself to for being a mom,” said long-time friend Mindy Servello. “They won’t understand how caring she was, or how she lived for being a mother.”

Brown had a big heart and protected those she loved — Jeanine Brown said her daughter promised to be her caretaker after working in a nursing home.

Friends who Brown knew since grade school said she regularly consoled them during their worst times, and celebrated with them at their best.

And it wasn’t just people — Brown loved animals. Melissa Corrigan, a longtime family friend, remembered when Brown took in a stray cat when she was already caring for several other pets. She knew she could care for that one, too.

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Brown’s death, the news coverage and gruesome circumstances around it, weigh heavily on her loved ones. In court, they described struggles with debilitating anxiety and days when they can’t stop crying.

It is her children who will suffer the most, Jeanine Brown said.

“You have forever taken — you have forever altered the lives of so many,” she told Libby.

RESTITUTION

Assistant Attorney General Lisa Marchese asked that Libby be ordered to pay more than $165,000 in restitution to Jeanine Brown to care for her grandchildren.

“I would suggest to you it’s actually a modest figure,” Marchese said.

Assistant Attorney General Lisa Marchese looks at Brandon Libby’s attorneys while discussing the plea deal she agreed to after jurors announced they could not reach a unanimous decision on the murder charge against Libby. Gregory Rec/Portland Press Herald

McKeon didn’t disagree that there’s an enormous impact to Brown’s children, financial and otherwise. But, he said, he also had to take into account what Libby can actually pay. He likely will spend the rest of his working life behind bars.

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Libby’s attorneys pointed out that even if their client secures a job at the state prison, he’s probably not going to make much.

“He really does have an inability to pay either now or in the future,” his attorney, Daniel Wentworth, said.

Wentworth said the defense was caught off-guard by the state’s restitution request, and that civil court would have been a more appropriate place to argue this.

Libby had already agreed to his prison sentence before coming to court. But before the sentence was finalized, his parents slowly approached the stand with one request — that Brown’s death be considered an accident.

“I’m not here to make words up for Brandon or the situation, other than, it takes two,” said Libby’s stepfather, Daniel Hodgkin, who said he has known Libby for more than 15 years to be a gentle person. “… I ask that, in your hearts, you look at this as a horrible accident.”

He and Libby’s mother, Lilo Hodgkin, said they also miss Brown and the grandchildren they can no longer see. Both families were in court every day of Libby’s trial, sitting quietly on opposite sides of the same gallery.

“He has admitted his guilt in her death,” said Lilo Hodgkin. “But he did not murder her.”


HOW TO GET HELP 

IF YOU or someone you know has experienced domestic violence, you can call the statewide Domestic Abuse Helpline at 1-866-834-4357 to talk to someone who can help. You can learn more online here.

FOR OTHER support or referrals, call the NAMI Maine Help Line at 800-464-5767 or email helpline@namimaine.org.

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