Left: Manson Bryant seen in a booking photo (via Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction). Right: Bryant seen in court objecting to the sentence issued to him in March 2019 (via YouTube screengrab).
An Ohio man who called the judge who sentenced him to more than two decades in prison “racist as f**k” during a courtroom outburst shouldn’t have had additional prison time tacked on to his decades-long sentence, according to the state’s highest court.
Manson Bryant, 35, was convicted by a jury in 2018 on robbery, kidnapping, and weapons charges relating to an armed burglary of an occupied trailer home. He and a co-defendant were accused of crawling through the home’s window and holding the resident at gunpoint while robbing him.
At Bryant’s sentencing hearing in March 2019, he was given the chance to speak on his own behalf.
“I made a lifetime of bad decisions,” Bryant told Lake County Common Pleas Court Judge Eugene Lucci at the time. “And those bad decisions has caused pain to a lot of people in my family. For that, I am truly sorry.”
Bryant said that many of his decision were driven by drug addiction, and that he wanted to stay clean. He also praised Lucci and the criminal justice system as a whole.
“I have never gone through trial before,” he said at his hearing. “I have a newfound respect for the efforts of the attorneys, judges, jurors, and goal in living as an, as giving an accused person a opportunity to have a case heard. That’s all anyone can ask. I am thankful for the…
