PORTLAND – After last-minute attempts by her lawyers to sow doubt in the jury’s guilty verdict, and pleas from friends and family for mercy, Linda Dolloff – the blond, petite Standish woman who gained a national spotlight after being found guilty last May of nearly killing her husband with a baseball bat – was sentenced last Friday afternoon to 25 years in prison, with all but 16 years suspended.

Dolloff, who ran a yoga and pottery studio out of the home she and her husband, Jeffrey Dolloff, shared off Oak Hill Road, was sentenced by Cumberland County Superior Court Justice Joyce Wheeler, who also presided over the three-week trial last May.

Dolloff was found guilty by a jury May 22 on charges of attempted murder, elevated aggravated assault and false public alarm/report stemming from the April 12, 2009, incident in which Dolloff was accused of beating her husband with his prized baseball bat while he slept and then shooting herself.

Jeffrey Dolloff, who did not attend the sentencing hearing, is back to commuting regularly to Boston for work but has lingering effects from the severe beating he took almost two years ago. Due to blows to his head, which broke all his teeth and nearly all the bones in his face, he has lost the sense of smell and taste. He also has multiple blood clots and must take the blood thinner Coumadin each day.

Linda Dolloff still maintains her innocence – at her sentencing, she took to the podium to say she wasn’t guilty – and claims an intruder perpetrated the beating and shot her before exiting through the back door.

As part of Wheeler’s sentencing guidelines, Dolloff will also serve four years of probation, during which time she will be barred from having any direct or indirect contact with Jeffrey Dolloff or his immediate family. She must also pay $15,000 of Jeffrey Dolloff’s medical expenses and submit to a full psychological evaluation and take any prescribed medication.

In stark contrast to her demeanor at trial, where she showed no emotion as the jury’s guilty verdict was read, Dolloff was tearful during phases of Friday’s four-hour proceeding, holding a tissue to her face for prolonged periods and shielding her face from the press, which included representatives from local and regional newspapers, TV stations and a crew from ABC’s “20/20” program, which ran a investigative piece on Dolloff last summer.

Testimony

Prior to Wheeler’s sentencing, last ditch efforts by both sides, including the prosecuting District Attorney Stephanie Anderson and defense attorney Dan Lilley, summarized what transpired in the three-week trial and added some new information that had yet to be publicized, the most important of which was the revelation of Linda Dolloff’s numerous cosmetic surgeries.

While dating Jeffrey Dolloff more than a decade ago, Dolloff had elective leg-lengthening surgery to increase her height, something Anderson capitalized on by arguing it was proof that Dolloff had the capacity to shoot herself after beating her husband to make it look like an intruder perpetrated the crime.

“The drive of the defendant I think is a very important aggravating factor,” Anderson said. “This defendant is a person who will do anything and go to extreme measures beyond the imagination and comprehension of reasonable people to achieve her goals. And an example of that is this leg surgery. I mean, most people would wear heels. She subjected herself to six months of medieval torture, multiple surgeries and confinement to a wheelchair in order to gain an inch or two of height.

“And,” Anderson said, “she lied about the reasons why. She told people it was because she had this horrible disease. She didn’t tell people it was an overabundance of vanity. And she lived that lie for years. The kind of person who would do that is the kind of person who would have no problem taking a gun slightly larger than a BB gun, a .22, and holding it in the fleshy part of their hip and firing it off.”

In trying to get the maximum 30-year penalty, Anderson went on to call Dolloff manipulative, deceitful, antisocial, extremely self-absorbed, with an over-inflated sense of self-importance and an idealized view of herself, all personality traits Anderson summed up by saying Dolloff is a “narcissistic psychopath.” Because of her personality, Anderson said, “it would be impossible to rehabilitate” Dolloff.

With each barb Anderson threw against Dolloff, Lilley offered an alternative view. Regarding the leg-lengthening surgery, which was brought up often during the four-hour session and mentioned again in the judge’s closing comments, Lilley argued Dolloff’s lying about the cosmetic surgery was typical and that the vain act taken a decade prior had little bearing on current events.

“I would bet most of the women in this room,” Lilley argued, “would be very reluctant to tell people whether they have natural hair or have enhancements. It’s just not something people talk about, and indeed she didn’t. That has now been parlayed by the state into her being a pathological liar…That’s a stretch, it seems to me. Vanity is a sin, and we’re going to have a lot of full jails because there’s a lot of it around. I don’t think those are aggravating factors, that’s what I’m suggesting, and I don’t think they should be considered as such.”

Lilley then said that the leg-lengthening and breast augmentation surgeries were irrelevant concluding, “What does this have to do with this case?”

Dolloff’s testimony

In what was perhaps the most emotional part of the hearing, Dolloff took to the podium to beg for mercy from the judge. Apologizing for being a “huge burden on the legal system, the court and everyone involved,” she maintained her innocence saying the crime “goes against my abiding belief in non-violence.”

Fighting back tears during her speech, Dolloff also claimed that Anderson offered Dolloff a three-year sentence before the trial started, something Anderson vehemently denied. Dolloff, however, said she couldn’t accept the plea bargain saying, “But I could not do that, and I did not try to kill my husband,” she told the court in a raised voice.

While a few of Jeffrey Dolloff’s family members were present, the audience consisted mostly of Dolloff’s former yoga students, relatives and former co-workers who Lilley invited to speak. Each requested the judge show leniency due to Dolloff’s gentle nature and good works in the community.

Dolloff’s oldest sister, Patricia Small, said her sister, who lived with her during the trial and will live with her after her release, is “kind, loving and we have never seen her violent toward anyone,” adding, “We don’t want to lose the person Linda is because she has been in prison too long.”

Judge’s summary

Wheeler, however, in announcing the sentence, predicated her statements saying, “This is, indeed, a strange case.”

Saying she wished discussion of Dolloff’s personality had come up during the trial, Wheeler invited the testimony of a forensic psychiatrist, Dr. Carlyle Voss of Portland, who gave his opinion of Dolloff’s mental state and answered questions for an hour from Anderson and Lilley on Dolloff’s personality. Not wanting to use perjorative descriptions of her personality and preferring to describe it as a cluster of overlapping traits, including antisocial behavior, narcissism, and untruthfulness, Voss reluctantly agreed with Anderson near the end of his testimony that Dolloff displayed “narcissistic psychopathic” traits. Wheeler referred to Voss’s determination saying it helped make sense of a “strange case.”

“As a judge, my obligation is to accept the jury’s verdict,” Wheeler said. “Some say (Dolloff) is evil and should be penalized. (They say) she did it and we shouldn’t be talking about leniency. And I also know that there are people here who say she didn’t do it, and we should be giving her every break there is. And there are also people here who don’t really say she didn’t do it but they say (they) don’t understand how she could have done it. But I as a judge can’t engage in those questions of whether she did or didn’t do it. For me the question is whether the evidence supports the verdict of the jury.”

Wheeler then summarized the potential motives indicating Dolloff was the likely perpetrator: She did not want the divorce because she would lose everything in her life including her yoga and pottery studios located at the house. Jeffrey Dolloff was going forward with the divorce, which had been discussed for years previous, and had invited his new girlfriend to the home for a weekend visit.

Wheeler also pointed out Dolloff’s failure to accept responsibility for the crime.

“In accepting the jury’s verdict that she did commit these crimes, I have to conclude that she shows no remorse, empathy or responsibility,” Wheeler said.

Remarking on Dolloff’s cosmetic surgeries and writings in her journal that showed Dolloff wanting to win back her husband even though he was seeing another woman and wanting to finalize the divorce, Wheeler said, “I think the preoccupation or fantasies with beauty or ideal love explain in part why she may have sought some of the plastic surgery and some of her writings about how distraught she was over the ending of her marriage with Jeff.”

Quoting from Voss’ written testimony, Wheeler said, “She raged over Jeffrey Dolloff’s decision to leave her, augmented by the jealousy of his developing a relationship with another woman which could have created sufficient emotional distress that motivated her to commit the acts for which she has been convicted. She appeared to Dr. Voss to be very possessive and controlling of Jeffrey Dolloff and losing Jeffrey Dolloff was devastating to her.”

After Wheeler handed down the 16-year sentence, which drew gasps from the audience, many of whom were her supporters, Dolloff fought back more tears and after conferring with her lawyers, was led out a back door by a court security officer. She was then transported to the Maine Correctional Center in Windham, although she will likely serve out her sentence at the state prison in Warren.

According to Lilley, the sentencing will be appealed to the Maine Supreme Court sometime within the next week.

Linda Dolloff, right, listens as District Attorney Stephanie Anderson asks questions regarding Dolloff’s personality of Dr. Carlyle Voss, a forensic psychiatrist who the judge brought in to give expert testimony on Dolloff’s mental state. Seated next to Dolloff are her attorney Dan Lilley and Karen Wolfram. (Staff photo by John Balentine)