An 84-year-old man was sentenced to 12 years in prison in the strangling death of his 88-year-old wife. Albert L. Pollock was wheeled into Superior Court Wednesday and had to move closer to hear the judge hand down her sentence in the case.
Prosecutors said Pollock strangled his wife with a towel last August. The couple had been married for 60 years.
Pollock pleaded guilty in January to voluntary manslaughter with the use of a weapon.
His defense attorney, W. Mark Kirkness, said Marie Pollock broke her leg several months before her death and had stopped taking medication for advanced Parkinson's disease.
Pollock feared his wife had given up and was worried she would be put in a nursing home, Kirkness said.
In court, Pollock wore a blue prison jumpsuit and sat in a wheelchair until his sentence was pronounced. Saying he was hard of hearing, Pollock got up from his chair and hobbled toward the bench to be closer to the judge.
Family members said they had no animosity toward Pollock, who lived with his wife in La Mesa, a suburb east of San Diego.
"My family and I want my uncle to know we forgive him, we love him and we support him and we bear no ill will toward him," said Pollock's niece, Molly Risak, whose mother was the victim's sister.
Pollock waved to Risak and her mother as he was wheeled out of the courtroom.
