‘More time should have been added,’ says mother who lost only son in fatal stabbing

A month after a jury convicted him of voluntary manslaughter for fatally stabbing a friend during a fistfight, Zachery Holden decided to plead guilty Wednesday before Judge Bobby Peters sentenced him to 20 years in prison.

Holden told the court he wanted to take responsibility for killing Carlos Cordero on New Year’s Day 2015, and he asked forgiveness from Cordero’s family.

But Cordero’s parents were not impressed with Holden’s last-minute contrition.

“I just think more time should have been added,” mother, Temeta Cordero, said after the sentencing.

Prosecutor Don Kelly had asked Peters to give Holden the maximum sentence the law allowed.

Besides manslaughter, the jury convicted Holden of aggravated assault and using a knife to commit a crime, the same charges to which he pleaded guilty. The maximum would have been 45 years in prison. He is 22.

Temeta and husband, Lidel Cordero, both spoke before Peters delivered the sentence.

The mother said learning she was pregnant in 1988 was the happiest day of her life, and she “met a little angel of God” when her only son was born in 1989.

“His first word I heard him say was ‘mama’… I cried because God blessed me with this child,” she said. “I saw him grow into a brave young man with a heart of gold.”

She wept as she recalled standing over his casket at his funeral.

“I spent those moments looking down at him and kissing him for the last time,” she said.

“The loss of my son is beyond words,” she told Peters. “I am forever permanently broken.”

The father said losing his son has left a lingering void in his life, as they’ll never again watch sports together or go to the park, and he will never have grandchildren.

“It hurts every day of my life knowing that my son is gone,” he said.

Holden’s family also spoke, his wife, Blair Sanders-Holden, telling Peters that her husband and Carlos Cordero were close. “They were always together,” she said. “They were best friends.”

Holden echoed that, telling Peters, “He was a good friend of mine.”

No, he was not, Temeta Cordero said afterward: “They were not friends.”

Holden told the court he daily regrets killing Cordero, and would accept whatever sentence Peters gave him. “I just ask forgiveness regardless what happens today in this court,” he said.

By pleading guilty, he gave up any right to appeal his conviction and sentence.

Jurors deliberated about three hours before convicting Holden, who had been charged with murder. They had three options: They could have found Holden guilty of murder, guilty of voluntary manslaughter, or not guilty if the homicide was justifiable self-defense.

The latter option would have meant Holden stabbed his unarmed friend in defense of himself and Sanders-Holden, then his girlfriend, whom he claimed Cordero struck twice in the face. Arguing that, Garner cited not only the law on self-defense but Georgia’s “stand your ground” law. A similar Florida law stirred controversy when George Zimmerman used it in defense of his fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin in 2012.

Voluntary manslaughter means killing someone while in the heat of passion.

While arguing which laws best fit Holden’s case, attorneys recounted witnesses’ testimony of what happened Jan. 1, 2015, at 6228 Potomac Circle, where friends were smoking marijuana and playing online video games when Holden and Cordero got into two fistfights, the second leading to Cordero’s death.

The fight started over a marijuana pipe Holden accused Cordero of spilling. Their mutual friends said Holden kept picking at Cordero until the two went out in the street to brawl, before their friends broke it up.

The homeowner then ordered Holden to leave. He went inside to get a backpack and went to his then-girlfriend’s car parked in the driveway, but did not depart. He instead shouted insults at Cordero, baiting him to come back out.

One bystander said he could see that Holden had something in his hand when the second fight started. Kelly alleged Holden already was holding his knife, which had brass knuckles on its handle, as he taunted Cordero.

When the girlfriend tried to intervene, Cordero hit her in the face. She and Holden claimed it was deliberate. Other witnesses thought Cordero inadvertently hit her when she got between the two.

Holden started shouting, “You goin’ to hit my girl?” He opened the blade on the folding knife and started stabbing Cordero as Cordero backed down the driveway, eventually falling backward and hitting his head hard on the pavement.

A medical examiner testified Cordero had four stab wounds, two in his left arm, one in his abdomen and one in his left groin that cut his femoral artery, causing massive bleeding.

Cordero, 26, died in the hospital the next morning, 10 hours after the 5:15 p.m. stabbing.

Holden’s defense attorney Mike Garner argued that if Holden committed any crime, it was voluntary manslaughter for stabbing Cordero in a rush of anger, the result of Cordero’s hitting the girlfriend.

He cited the law that defines voluntary manslaughter as killing another “solely as the result of a sudden, violent, and irresistible passion resulting from serious provocation sufficient to excite such passion in a reasonable person.” The penalty for that alone is one to 20 years in prison.

The law adds some exceptions: It’s not voluntary manslaughter “if there should have been an interval between the provocation and the killing sufficient for the voice of reason and humanity to be heard,” in which case “the killing shall be attributed to deliberate revenge and be punished as murder.”

Garner in his closing argument also cited the law on self-defense, which allows Georgians to use deadly force “only” if they “reasonably” believe it’s needed to defend themselves or others from another’s “imminent use of unlawful force” likely to cause “death or great bodily injury.”

That law also has exceptions: no one can claim self-defense if he “initially provokes the use of force against himself with the intent to use such force as an excuse”; is committing a felony; or “was engaged in a combat by agreement unless he withdraws from the encounter.”

Quoting the state law commonly called “stand your ground,” Garner noted a portion that says those acting in defense of themselves or others have “no duty to retreat.”

Kelly in his closing countered that Holden stabbed Cordero not once, but repeatedly, leaving the other man bleeding so profusely his blood streamed down the driveway and pooled at the street.

Before Holden’s sentencing, the prosecutor again pointed out that unlike Holden, Cordero had no weapon and presented no threat of deadly force, and he was backing away when Holden stabbed him.

This story was originally published November 2, 2016 at 2:03 PM with the headline "‘More time should have been added,’ says mother who lost only son in fatal stabbing."