3 Teenagers Get Life Sentences in Fatal Stabbing

A judge Wednesday handed down maximum sentences for four Conejo Valley teenagers convicted in the murder of the 16-year-old son of an LAPD officer, calling the defendants remorseless, arrogant and dangerous.

Three of the teens received life sentences without possibility of parole, while the fourth received 25 years to life--the maximum allowable punishment because he was only 15 at the time of the murder.

The four defendants, Jason Holland, 19, and his brother Micah, 16, of Thousand Oaks, Brandon Hein, 19, of Oak Park and Tony Miliotti, 19, of Westlake Village, sat silently throughout the daylong sentencing hearing in Malibu.

Even when confronted by the victim’s emotional father, they remained impassive.

“My wife and I will never understand why you had to kill him,” said Jim Farris, staring down the boys. He looked directly at the elder Holland brother, who admitted during the trial that he stabbed Jimmy Farris to death.

“I’ll never forget Jason Holland’s casual courtroom demonstration showing exactly how you killed my son,” Farris said.

Defense attorneys had spent two full days pleading for leniency, based on a rarely used precedent set by a 1983 case where an emotionally immature defendant’s sentence was declared disproportionate to the crime committed and later reduced.

But Malibu Municipal Court Judge Lawrence J. Mira rejected their arguments, tossing out the opinions of psychologists who said the Holland brothers, considered the leaders of the group, suffered from severe behavioral problems and from an abusive stepfather.

Mira gave Jason Holland, Hein and Miliotti life sentences, and Micah Holland the maximum sentence for his age--25 years to life. Because they killed Farris while committing a robbery, they were convicted of murder with a special circumstance, which carries a minimum life sentence without parole. Within minutes, all four defense attorneys were passing previously written appeals to the court clerk.

Before handing down his sentence, the judge said he believed the four youths set out on a deliberate crime spree on the afternoon of May 22, 1995, starting with stealing alcohol from an acquaintance, then moving on to taking a wallet from an unlocked car and terrorizing its owner.

That day ended with the stabbing death of Jimmy Farris and the near fatal wounding of his friend Mike McLoren. The Hollands, Hein and Miliotti went to McLoren’s backyard fort in Agoura Hills, intending to steal some marijuana he had stashed there. A fifth youth, Chris Velardo, 18, of Oak Park--who pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter last fall and is awaiting sentencing--accompanied them but remained in the car.

Although the convicted youths were not members of an organized gang, Mira said their actions that day were no different from that of a violent street gang.

“I believe on this tragic day, they formed their own gang,” Mira said. “The genesis of this group is in their lifestyle, their aimlessness, their purposelessness. They didn’t take their education seriously, they rejected their families’ values. They adopted a we-do-whatever-feels-good-for-us attitude. That is classic hedonism.”

Except for the stone-faced young defendants, the packed courtroom overflowed with emotion Wednesday. Miliotti’s attorney Curt Leftwich’s voice broke as he pleaded for leniency for his client. Sharry Holland, the mother of the two Holland brothers, clutched a rosary as she sat in the gallery. Grandmothers, aunts and cousins of the defendants wept openly.

But the most passionate moments came when Jim and Judie Farris stepped forward to give their victim impact statements.

Grim-faced and dressed in a dark gray suit, Jim Farris climbed into the witness stand to ask for maximum sentences for his son’s killers. “My son is dead and you people killed him,” he said. “And for that you need to be punished to the full extent of the law.”