ERIC BRADY The Roanoke Times

Melanie Engleman listens Wednesday to her sentencing from Roanoke Circuit Court Judge Charlie Dorsey to five years in prison for the 2007 death of William Christopher Linn.

Today, Melanie Elaine Engleman turns 18.

Wednesday, a Roanoke Circuit Court judge sentenced her to serve five years in an adult prison, with 25 more years suspended, for the murder of her 19-year-old ex-boyfriend.

William Christopher Linn died the night of June 2, 2007, when Engleman, then 16, stabbed him in the heart with a knife during a confrontation over Linn's relationship with another teenage girl. His family expressed anguish and outrage over the sentence. Linn's father, William Fralin, repeated "Five years" over and over in apparent disbelief after the hearing ended.

Five years is the minimum possible punishment for second-degree murder. Judge Charlie Dorsey said in crafting the sentence that he took into account Engleman's age when she committed the crime and the possibility, based on evaluation reports, that she could still be a contributing member of society. "You have potential that may be recognized in time," the judge said.

Yet he decided to put her in a penitentiary rather than a juvenile facility, saying she'd received services through the juvenile justice system during her troubled life, and those attempts to help her clearly hadn't worked. "The juvenile system's been incapable of effectively dealing with your situation," he said.

She will be on probation indefinitely after her release.

Engleman, who stayed out on bond after a jury found her guilty in February, is now married and pregnant, her child due in December.

Dorsey said the case proved the truth of Rudyard Kipling's phrase, "The measure of our torment is the measure of our youth," saying the death resulted from "teenage angst run amok."

"If this isn't the most tragic case of misspent youth on both sides that I've ever seen, I don't know what is," defense attorney Chris Kowalczuk said after the hearing. "I feel that the judge's sentence was very fair in light of all the circumstances," including the bad judgment exhibited by Engleman and everyone else involved in the confrontation.

According to testimony, the night of Linn's death, Engleman and two female friends went to the house of a girl Linn was seeing in order to confront her. Linn came out of the house, yelled at Engleman and her friends, then asked to speak to Engleman alone.

Engleman testified that Linn attacked her and said she stabbed him once to drive him off. She admitted to stealing the knife and having it ready in her hand when she went to the girl's house.

During Wednesday's hearing, prosecutor Alice Ekirch noted that psychological evaluations describe Engleman as manipulative. She asked a psychologist whether Engleman might have deliberately gotten pregnant in an attempt to influence the sentencing. The psychologist said that the teen denied any such intent.

Before she was sentenced, Engleman tearfully read an apology to the judge. "I've made a lot of bad choices and I've made a lot of mistakes that hurt a lot of people," she said. "I never meant for any of this to happen."

According to testimony, both Engleman and Linn had a troubled history. Both had bipolar disorder, both experimented with street drugs and both ran afoul of the law.

Linn's maternal grandmother, Mary Linn, gave the judge a moving account of raising her grandson during the years she was his legal guardian. She described being diagnosed with breast cancer in 1998, the same year Christopher played in a champion rec league football team. Her grandson, who had studied haiku in school, wrote her a poem: "You are on chemo, but you still take care of me. How do you do it?"

She said despite her grandson's problems, he had hopes and ambitions that will never be realized. She asked the judge to send a message to other teenagers that "human life is precious and is not disposable."

Linn's relatives made it clear they believed the judge had sent the wrong message.

"Christopher will never get to see his siblings graduate high school," said Sherry Kendrick, his aunt. "In just a couple years, she'll have her entire life to raise a child."