The man convicted of strangling a Baton Rouge icon in 2019 was ordered to spend the rest of his life in a Louisiana prison on Thursday.

A jury found Ronn Jermaine Bell, 44, guilty of second-degree murder in the killing of local civil rights activist Sadie Roberts-Joseph. Their verdict culminated a five-day murder trial inside the 19th Judicial District Courthouse that ended June 7.

District Judge Brad Myers imposed the state-mandated sentence of life without the possibility of parole on Bell. The courtroom at the 19th JDC was nearly empty Thursday.

“You killed Ms. Roberts in the most primitive and personal way possible, by strangulation and suffocation,” the judge said. “A crime as senseless and brutal as that deserves the sentence that the state has set forth in the statute — servin

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