Grieving man urges forgiveness to wife's killer
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Benjamin Cope, 21, center - pictured leaving the courthouse after being found guily of involuntary manslaughter - was 20 when he drove his black Toyota 4Runner up Beadling Road, when, prosecutors said, he failed to stop at a stop sign, hitting Lisa Clay Styles.
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Brett Styles implored the young man who killed his wife and the mother of their three young children in a terrible accident last year to make something of his life.
"While difficult, I know that Ben Cope deserves my forgiveness," Mr. Styles said at the end of his lengthy victim-impact statement Friday. "After his punishment has concluded, he has his whole life in front of him, and I urge him to make the most of it."
Following the hearing, Mr. Styles expanded on his feelings.
"We live in a world where we've punished and punished and punished and we've been more vengeful. And it's gotten us nowhere as a society," he said. "He took away a beautiful, beautiful, beautiful person. And it's my duty to carry on that beauty. And part of that beauty is my forgiveness.
"Lisa embodied goodness and compassion."
Lisa Clay Styles, 36, was struck while jogging along Washington Road with two of her children in a stroller on June 28, 2010. Mr. Cope, who was 20 at the time, was driving his black Toyota 4Runner up Beadling Road, when, prosecutors said, he failed to stop at a stop sign, hitting Ms. Styles.
She suffered severe head injuries and died the next day.
Mr. Cope, who was convicted by a jury in September of involuntary manslaughter, driving under the influence and reckless endangerment, was sentenced to serve at least 364 days and up to two years less two days incarceration.
The odd wording of the sentence allows Mr. Cope to serve its entirety in the Allegheny County Jail.
He was immediately taken into custody.
During a 21/2-hour, heart-rending hearing, Ms. Styles' family and friends tried to explain to Common Pleas Judge Anthony M. Mariani the magnitude of the loss.
Her three children are growing up without their mother.
Her sister-in-law upended her own life and marriage in Houston to move back to Pittsburgh to care for her nieces and nephew full time.
And Brett Styles is left to figure out how to go on with his life.
"Now I live in solitude, uncertainty and fear," he said. "My faith is shaken. How could God have let this happen? What have I done to deserve such a loss? Lisa was my world."
Ms. Styles' mother, Ellen Clay, told the judge that her daughter's death was particularly difficult, coming just seven months after her own spouse died.
"My hope is that he was with her that day, and that he caught her, and she was not afraid."
Ms. Styles' two best friends -- one from fourth grade and another from college -- described the woman's personality. She was fun, kind, giving, and an "incredible mother."
"I was inspired by her," said Emily Zabroski, who met Ms. Styles in 1983. "I always wanted to be a mom like Lisa."
Devon Lewis, Mr. Styles' sister, told the court that she left her husband, who was working in pediatrics in Texas to move back to Pittsburgh to be with her brother and help him with the children.
She described Ms. Styles' elaborate birthday parties -- with princess impersonators and complicated cakes the woman made from scratch. Just two weeks after the accident, Ms. Lewis had to plan the first party without Ms. Styles.
"I have since planned four birthday parties for her three children. Each time with the same cookbook and each time with the same sense of loss as that first birthday without Lisa," she said.
Mr. Styles spoke warmly of his relationship with his wife, who planned to become a children's advocate.
Though he met her in ninth-grade biology -- and said for years, it was unrequited love -- the two reconnected 10 years later. They married and had children, with Ms. Styles finishing her law degree and passing the bar exam, eight months pregnant with their second child and with a 1-year-old at home.
"She was amazing," he said.
He spoke with regret. Their third child was born in April 2009, and life was so busy, Mr. Styles said, that they never had a chance to take a family portrait all together.
Mr. Styles spent part of his time on the witness stand talking about what he saw as the failure of the Cope family to acknowledge, or take responsibility for, what happened. Had the accident occurred 150 years ago, he said, "the Cope family would be on my doorstep, hat-in-hand, offering an apology. But in this time, I impotently battle through intermediaries, never arriving at any real resolution.
"It is by definition, insult upon injury."
Although he blames Mr. Cope, Mr. Styles questioned the man's parents, who, he said, enabled their son, who admitted to police he smoked marijuana three or four times a day.
As each person left the stand and hugged in the gallery, Mr. Cope sat in his seat, watching, crying and sometimes rocking back and forth.
When it was his turn to speak, he asked the judge for a moment, braced himself against counsel table and took a deep breath.
Walking to the stand, the tall, thin man covered his mouth with a tissue, and then told a court staffer he might be sick. The man placed a trash can next to Mr. Cope.
"I know there's absolutely nothing I can say to any of you to make this at all better, and I know that," he said. "I know you must carry around a lot of pain and anger, and I'm sorry ... I caused that."
Mr. Cope said he was devastated by the accident, and that it feels as though time has frozen.
"It's all still just as fresh. I think it always will be that way," Mr. Cope said.
He told Mr. Styles that he'd wanted to reach out to the family -- to offer some help, even to do yard work -- but was rebuffed by his lawyers.
"I wanted nothing more than to reach out to you. There's nothing I can give you," Mr. Cope said. "I want to give you everything. I can't.
"I can't."
He said he feels helpless.
"I just want it to be OK, and I'm afraid it never will be," Mr. Cope said. "I live with the great responsibility now of knowing the decisions I have made, and that the death of Lisa Styles could have been prevented."
As Judge Mariani explained his sentence -- and the five years of probation Mr. Cope will serve at the conclusion of his jail term -- he said aloud, "Oh my God."
Mr. Styles would not say if he agreed with the sentence.
"My children will never be the same. I will never be the same. But one of the saddest consequences of Ben Cope's actions is that Lisa will never get to reap the rewards of her hard work on this earth," Mr. Styles said. "All her plans, all her diligence, and all the dreams she ever had or would have had were stolen by Ben Cope's recklessness."
First Published December 17, 2011 12:00 am
