By Julie Shaw
Philadelphia Daily News
PHILADELPHIA — A woman who helped an accused cop-killer hide from authorities in the days following the shooting death of Police Sgt. Stephen Liczbinski last year will have several years behind bars to think about love, oh love, and where that deep, deep love landed her.
Tonya Lynne Stephens was sentenced yesterday to 6 1/2 to 13 years in prison - an accumulation of punishments by two judges - for helping her boyfriend, Eric Floyd, hide from authorities in May 2008.
Dressed in a blue Muslim headscarf and matching gown, Stephens yesterday told Common Pleas Judge Jeffrey Minehart that although she had been with Floyd, “I did not help him out.”
Minehart, however, told her not to “rehash the case,” reminding her that he had already found her guilty after a June bench trial of hindering Floyd’s apprehension.
“You don’t feel you did anything wrong?” the judge asked.
“I did. I mean . . . I’m sorry I got myself into this,” Stephens said.
Minehart then sentenced her to four to eight years in state prison on felony charges of hindering apprehension and conspiracy, with credit for time served.
On May 3, 2008, Floyd, with Levon Warner and Howard Cain, robbed a bank in the ShopRite on Aramingo Avenue near Castor, Port Richmond, then fled in a stolen Jeep, authorities said.
Several blocks later, Cain got out and fatally shot Liczbinski five times with an SKS rifle, authorities said.
Cain, 34, was fatally shot by police that day. Floyd, 34, and Warner, 40, face a June 7, 2010, murder trial.
After the shooting, Floyd remained a fugitive until he was captured four days later with Stephens in a dirty, abandoned rowhouse on Windsor Avenue near 54th Street in the Kingsessing session.
Bernard Siegel, Stephens’ attorney, told Minehart what his client did was, as “in the words of a Tammy Wynette song, she stood by her man.”
“She went with him while he ran. That’s it,” he said.
Prosecutor Mark Gilson, however, said Stephens had done much more than that. He described Stephens as an “unrepentant career criminal” with “17 arrests, 11 convictions, five commitments to prison,” 10 aliases, five dates of birth and 20 addresses.
Records show Stephens to be 36 or 39 years old. She had lived in Hunting Park and had also lived with Floyd in North Philly.
Siegel, who later said he would appeal the convictions, told the judge most of Stephens’ prior offenses were for prostitution. At the time of her arrest with Floyd, Stephens was on probation in a drug case.
In a separate proceeding yesterday, Common Pleas Senior Judge William J. Mazzola sentenced Stephens to 2 1/2 to five years in prison for violating the terms of her probation in the drug case by getting arrested in May 2008. Mazzola made his sentence consecutive to Minehart’s.
Gilson had asked Minehart for the maximum of seven to 14 years in the hindering-apprehension case. With Mazzola’s sentence tacked on, the prosecution pretty much got what it wanted.
Copyright 2009 Philadelphia Daily News