Sentencing: 15 years to life for John Osnes' killer

David Jassy, a 35-year-old black man, was sentenced Thursday to 15 years to life for the 2008 murder of  John Osnes, a 55-year-old white man. A jury convicted Jassy last month in the death of Osnes, a jazz pianist known as a stickler for pedestrian rights, who was beaten by Jassy and run over by his SUV after a confrontation in a  Hollywood crosswalk early in the morning of Sunday, Nov. 23, 2008. The Times' Harriet Ryan reported from court:

The sentencing of John Osnes' killer Thursday was as muted as the victim's death was shocking.

There were no angry words for the man who kicked the Hollywood jazz pianist to death in a brutal act of road rage and no emotion beyond a few choked words and a hand smearing away a tear.

"I don't feel compelled to say things that make you suffer more," Osnes' sister Mary Beth Anderson wrote in a letter read in court. "I expect you play that evening over and over in your head, like I do. What if?"

At the defense table, David Jassy, a 35-year-old Swedish national, stared over his shoulder with wet eyes at a courtroom gallery where two dozen of Osnes' friends sat silently awaiting the mandatory imposition of a sentence of 15 years to life in prison.

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Photo: Swedish hip-hop artist David Jassy, with attorneys Alec Rose and Denise Yaniv, looks back as letters are read in court from victim John Osnes' sisters, who were too ill to attend the hearing. "I expect you play that evening over and over in your head," one wrote. (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times / March 4, 2010)