The next morning, reporters gathered outside the courthouse again, and the verdict became the subject of commentary from people who had never met Beatrice. Some called it proof that the system worked; others argued that it had worked only because recordings made it impossible to ignore the injuries. Beatrice listened to a few minutes of coverage before switching off the television. She had no desire to become a permanent television guest discussing the night her collarbone broke.
At Mount Zion, the pastor asked whether the congregation could organize a community conversation about encounters with law enforcement. Beatrice agreed, provided the meeting would include practical information about obtaining records, finding legal aid, and asking for medical care after an injury. She wanted the church to offer something more useful than outrage. She also asked that no one put her photograph on a poster without asking her first.
She returned to physical therapy the following week. The therapist asked about the trial, and Beatrice said it had gone as well as she could have hoped. Then she picked up the lightweight exercise bar and began the familiar movements, counting carefully through each repetition. The verdict had changed Stanton's legal position, but it had not changed the range of motion in her shoulder, and that was the work still waiting in front of her.
The sentencing hearing was scheduled for several weeks later, after the court received reports about the offense and the defendant's personal circumstances. Beatrice was asked whether she wanted to provide a victim impact statement, and she spent three evenings trying to decide what belonged in it. At first she wrote about the pain, the therapy appointments, and the medical bills, then crossed out sentences that sounded more like an argument than an explanation. Patricia reminded her that she could speak in her own voice and did not need to produce a document that resembled a prosecutor's closing statement.
She finally wrote about the ordinary parts of her life that had changed. She described sleeping in a chair because her collarbone hurt too much to lie flat, asking her sons to carry a laundry basket she had carried for decades, and standing outside church because she was frightened to drive there alone. She described the humiliation of hearing herself accused of assaulting an officer when she had been trying to hand over her registration. She ended with the sentence that had stayed in her notebook since the first day: I was trying to go home.
Stanton's family attended the sentencing. Beatrice had seen photographs of his wife and children in news coverage, but in court they were simply people with frightened faces sitting behind a man who had made terrible decisions. She did not mistake their grief for an argument against accountability. She also understood that a prison sentence would change lives beyond Stanton's own, including lives that had no responsibility for his conduct.
Bradley presented evidence of Stanton's employment history and family obligations. The state emphasized the deliberate false reporting, the serious injury, and the misuse of a position that required restraint rather than dominance. Judge Wallace listened to both sides and explained that the sentence would be based on the criminal convictions and the applicable law. He declined to turn the proceeding into a referendum on every officer in the department or on Jackson's military service, neither of which was before him for sentencing.