An Arizona mother who murdered her two kids, ages 7 and 9, using a meat cleaver “designed to cut the bones of animals” will die behind bars after being handed two consecutive life sentences on Friday for her heinous crimes.

Yui Inoue, 44, was sentenced by Maricopa County Superior Judge Jeffrey Rueter, according to AZFamily, and he didn’t mince words when speaking to her.

“Words can’t adequately describe what occurred,” Rueter said, per AZFamily.

“I can’t imagine what those children went through in their last minutes,” he told the court. “The fear, the pain, the suffering. It’s incomprehensible.”

Inoue, who spoke through a Japanese interpreter, said that she believed her children were not dead. She was given the two life sentences plus two 20-year sentences to be served consecutively.

“They are spending time with my parents,” Inoue reportedly said. “I love my children very much so it’s very strange. My children are with my parents.”

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Inoue, who lived in Tempe, was accused of killing her two kids in a heinous 2021 murder case that wrapped up in February with her conviction.

“Mia and Kai Inoue were sleeping soundly in their beds when their own mother came into their bedroom holding a knife, a meat cleaver … and she attacked them with it,” prosecutors said during closing arguments, according to AZFamily. “She had to think. She had to act. And there’s nothing unclear or speculative about any of that.”

A Maricopa County jury found Inoue guilty of two counts of first-degree murder and two counts of child abuse in connection to a prior investigation by the Arizona Department of Child Safety and the May 2021 murders of her children Mia and Kai Inoue, who were identified by local officials.

Prosecutors say Inoue set upon her two children after claiming to hear “voices telling her to kill” them. She called 911 afterward and then went to flag down officers at a police substation on East Apache Boulevard near Arizona State University. The distraught mother was primarily speaking Japanese, police said, and she reportedly confessed to the officers on the spot about the slayings. Authorities went up to her apartment in response and found the mutilated bodies of Inoue’s kids.

“[S]he was hearing voices telling her to kill her children,” charging documents said.

Inoue later told police that she woke up with blood on her hands around 4:30 a.m. to find her children dead and also covered in blood near a doorway. After that, she said she took a bath and finally “woke up” to the reality of the violence she committed. Her lawyers claim Inoue had no memory of carrying out the killings. According to local ABC affiliate KNXV, Tempe police said a blood-soaked meat cleaver was discovered inside the vehicle Inoue drove to the police substation.

“We are here because this woman tried to decapitate two souls,” said Maricopa County prosecutor Shaylee Beasley during her closing arguments in February, according to the Arizona Republic.

Beasley described in detail how Inoue “delivered chop after chop” to the children while they both “tried to protect their heads.” She reportedly showed close-up photos of the children’s horrific injuries to the jury and claimed their deaths were connected to a bitter divorce she was having with their father.

Inoue’s attorney, Rebecca Felmly, had previously said that she believed there was enough reasonable doubt presented at Inoue’s trial for the jury to deliver a verdict of not guilty. During her first court appearance in 2021, Inoue told the judge “I did not kill anybody” through her interpreter.

“(The medical examiner) likened the amount of force to a guillotine,” Felmly said, according to AZFamily. “She is a very tiny, very slightly-built woman. She doesn’t have the energy, the power, or the strength to cause that type of injury to those kids.”

The child abuse case that Inoue was convicted of stemmed from a report made by Inoue’s husband in March 2021 — just months before the killings — saying Inoue “took Kai” and their whereabouts were unknown. “Police eventually located Ms. Inoue and Kai behind a convenience store,” DCS officials said in a May 2021 statement. “Ms. Inoue was taken to a psychiatric hospital and Kai was returned to his father.”

DCS investigators said they did not observe any “visible signs of abuse or neglect on the children” and the kids claimed “they felt safe with their parents.” The investigation did not find any evidence to warrant removal from the home, according to DCS officials.

Colin Kalmbacher contributed to this report.

A Michigan man who shot his girlfriend during an argument about the paternity of one of their children learned his fate during a sentencing hearing on Friday.

Vaughn Smith, who was 35 years old at the time of the shooting, sobbed in court during his sentencing hearing. Almost a full year after the May 2024 altercation between Smith and his girlfriend, whose name was being kept private, Smith stood before a judge as he pleaded guilty to assault with intent to commit murder and two firearms charges. In addition to his admitting to the crime, his girlfriend also asked for leniency.

But ultimately, it was up to the judge.

Drama and scorn ran rampant in a Michigan courtroom on Friday, where a convicted killer was shouted down by his victim’s family members before he could tender some formal condolences.

In June 2023, Sekou Conde, 24, repeatedly shot and killed Donrell Canda, 24, inside his own home – in front of the slain man’s son and girlfriend, according to the Ann Arbor Police Department.

In February, the defendant was convicted by a jury of his peers on all counts against him, including one count each of premeditated murder in the first degree, felony murder, and first-degree home invasion, as well as two counts of possession of a firearm during a felony.

On Friday, Washtenaw County Trial Court Judge Carol Kuhnke sentenced Conde to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

A mother in Minnesota is heading to prison for murdering her 23-month-old son by slamming his head repeatedly into a bedroom wall and then lying to police about what happened, claiming he was run over by his father — who happened to have his car in the shop at the time.

“She took my baby’s life,” said Robert Ortez, father of Aaryan, who was killed by his mom Larena Jackson in August 2023. “I still don’t know, to this day, what really happened because she isn’t saying anything,” Ortez told Valley News Live. “I’m still trying to figure out why she did it. I don’t know why[.]”

Two men in Florida are heading to prison — with each of them getting hit with a life sentence last week — for a horrific 2020 kidnapping in which they abducted three people and “tortured” them in the back of a U-Haul rental van before executing two of them, while one of the victims “miraculously survived,” according to prosecutors.

James Edward Daniels, 59, and Frederick Eugene Rudolph, 69, both of Miami, were sentenced to life in prison last Tuesday for the shooting deaths of Osmar Oliva, 50, and Johan Gonzalez Quesada, 26, in December 2020. The pair was convicted last year of conspiracy to commit kidnapping resulting in death, multiple counts of kidnapping resulting in death, and kidnapping, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida. A third defendant, Herbert Barr, pleaded guilty to kidnapping and was sentenced to 12 and a half years in prison followed by five years of supervised release.

“On Dec. 5, 2020, Daniels, Rudolph, Barr and other co-conspirators kidnapped three victims from a truck yard in Opa-locka, Fla.,” the attorney’s office said in a press release last week. “They bound and tortured the victims, duct-taped their eyes and threw them in the back of a rented van after stealing the victims’ drugs. They drove around the city for hours before taking the victims to an abandoned house in Opa-locka and attempting to execute them by shooting the three victims. Two of the victims died, while one miraculously survived.”

The victim who lived was airlifted to the hospital and made a full recovery, according to prosecutors. In addition to attacking and torturing them, Miami-Dade police reported that the trio had also been robbed.

“Daniels stole jewelry from one of the murdered victims,” prosecutors explained. “And all defendants benefitted by receiving drugs, money, or both, in exchange for their participation in the conspiracy.”

More from Law&Crime: Teen and his buddy fired nearly 100 bullets into apartment of romantic rival, but killed the wrong man: Cops

Records show Daniels and Rudolph were also indicted on unrelated drug distribution charges in July 2022. In that case, a judge sentenced Rudolph to 11 years in prison and Daniels to 35 months in prison, or just under three years. The men were indicted for the kidnapping case in November 2023. Neither is a stranger to the criminal justice system, with Daniels’ Florida Department of Corrections incarceration history dating back 40 years. Rudolph was on probation for a drug-related charge at the time of the murders, records show.

The investigation into the 2020 kidnapping and shootings was conducted by the South Florida High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA) Task Force.

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David Harris contributed to this report. 

A young man in upstate New York is heading to prison for strangling a childhood friend of his at a private birthday party he threw for her at an Airbnb — complete with cake, new sneakers for gifts and miniature wine bottles with the words “I love you” written on them, according to police and prosecutors.

Video footage, which was first obtained by the local NBC affiliate WSTM, shows 21-year-old Jhon Chacaguasay-Ilbis — who was handed a sentence of 23 years to life in prison Monday — walking into a Syracuse Airbnb on June 18, 2024, with the victim Joselyn Toaquiza, 21, and then exiting with her lifeless body. The young man pleaded guilty to strangling Toaquiza with an unknown object before driving her to a local park and dumping her body in a shallow grave, according to Onondaga County prosecutors and Judge Ted Limpert, who condemned Chacaguasay-Ilbis for his “unimaginable” crimes at his sentencing, which was covered by Syracuse.com.

“This crime is really inexplicable,” Limpert said.

A Washington couple who pleaded guilty to manslaughter following the accidental shooting death of their 1-year-old daughter were sentenced to prison time.

Jesse Kitson, 34, and Arabella Watts, 26, were charged in the death of their baby daughter, who was killed on Dec. 4, 2021, when an unsecured gun fell off a coffee table and fired. According to court documents obtained by local news outlet HeraldNet, Kitson was walking back and forth from the grill outside to the kitchen while Watts was on the couch inside checking her phone.

At the time, Kitson told police that he had left the gun on a shelf, but Watts said it was on the coffee table. While the exact details of the shooting were unclear, police believed that the baby pulled a coat off the table, causing the loaded gun to fall off and fire a round into the girl, killing her.

An Idaho man was sentenced this week to a minimum of 45 years and a maximum of life in prison for murdering a man he says bullied him on Facebook — shooting him 17 times in the street outside the victim’s home — over “rumors” that the killer was an undercover cop.

Mark Bent, 43, was found guilty in December of first-degree murder and felony enhancement for the use of a deadly weapon in the commission of a felony for the September 2023 killing of Nikolas Bird, 23, outside his home in Bonneville County, according to East Idaho News. Bent, who was sentenced Monday, took to Facebook after the fatal shooting to explain why he took Bird’s life, saying it stemmed from online bullying related to his occupation. Bird’s family has denied the bullying accusation and says there’s no evidence to support it.

“I am saddened to say that I have committed some serious crimes today that will put me in jail for the rest of my life or lead to death,” Bent wrote after the shooting, according to prosecutors and East Idaho News. “As some of you know, shortly after I moved to Idaho Falls, I was slandered on Facebook with rumors of me being an Undercover Police Officer. Those rumors were followed by threats, harassment and more slander. Even after the facts were out that I am not a Police Officer of any kind, people still chose to believe it and continue to harass, threaten me and eventually look up where I live and work and post it on the internet.”

A Jan. 6 rioter from Illinois who cursed out cops and used a flagpole to smash up a window — shouting “f—ing traitors” and “f—ing communist scum” while storming in and out of the U.S. Capitol building — is heading to prison and paying for the damages.

Justin LaGesse, 37, of McLeansboro, was sentenced Friday to 11 months in prison and ordered to pay $43,315 in restitution by U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg, according to the Department of Justice. He also got hit with 12 months of supervised release.

LaGesse, who pleaded guilty to a felony charge of destruction of government property last September, was accused of storming the Capitol with another defendant, Theodore Middendorf, who also pleaded guilty to destruction of government property and is awaiting sentencing. The pair allegedly smashed up a window near the “North Door” of the Capitol after attempting to get inside, according to court documents.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday rejected Donald Trump’s eleventh-hour request to halt Friday’s sentencing hearing in the president-elect’s criminal hush-money case out of New York.The 5-4 ruling against the 45th and future-47th president was less than one page.

“The application for stay presented to Justice Sotomayor and by her referred to the Court is denied for, inter alia, the following reasons,” the order reads. “First, the alleged evidentiary violations at President-Elect Trump’s state-court trial can be addressed in the ordinary course on appeal. Second, the burden that sentencing will impose on the President-Elect’s responsibilities is relatively insubstantial in light of the trial court’s stated intent to impose a sentence of ‘unconditional discharge’ after a brief virtual hearing.”