Man gets eight years for role in malicious wounding

Lynchburg News & Advance
Published: March 15, 2008

A Lynchburg man was sentenced to eight years in prison Friday for his role in a beating last year that left another city man brain damaged.
Bryant Lamont Kemper, 26, earlier pleaded guilty to aggravated malicious wounding in the Jan. 4, 2007, beating of Bill Janowski.
At his sentencing hearing Friday, he
apologized for his actions, but said he was only trying to defend himself against Janowski.
According to Kemper’s testimony Friday, a female friend of his and co-defendant Calvin Louis Mosby’s came to a home where they were staying either late Jan. 3, 2007, or very early the next morning. Kemper said the woman had been in an altercation with Janowski and had few clothes on.
After she refused to get police involved, Kemper testified, he and Mosby walked her back to a boarding house on the 1300 block of 14th Street. Janowski also lived there, but Kemper said he didn’t know the man.
On his way out of the house, an angry, knife-wielding Janowski confronted them, he testified. He tried to persuade Janowski to drop the knife, but in trying to physically disarm him, Kemper said he was stabbed. He said he only continued to hit Janowski because he kept getting up to attack him.
Furthermore, he told the judge, he couldn’t control Mosby when he started hitting Janowski with a vacuum cleaner, the weapon prosecutors said caused the worst injuries.
“I pray for Mr. Janowski every night,” Kemper said. “I’m sorry.”
Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Gretchen Hutt, however, said the woman escorted home by Kemper and Mosby that night told prosecutors that the men kicked in Janowski’s door and attacked him.
She argued that Kemper should have gotten more than 20 years in prison for his role in the attack given two earlier convictions for assault and battery against family members — once against his ex-wife and mother of two of his children.
Because Mosby and Kemper attacked Janowski together, Kemper was indeed responsible for Mosby striking the man with a vacuum cleaner.
“Heat of passion can’t be claimed when the person is responsible for invoking the fight,” Hutt said.
Circuit Court Judge Leyburn Mosby, of no direct relation to Kemper’s co-defendant, said he believed Kemper was sorry and that he had not gone to the home looking for a fight, but that his earlier convictions for aggressive, violent crimes worked against him.
Calvin Louis Mosby is scheduled to be sentenced on April 18.
Janowski is permanently disabled and resides in the skilled-care unit at Virginia Baptist Hospital. His sister testified that he has the intellect of a preschooler.