After being found guilty on Friday of imperfect self-defense manslaughter in the shooting death of her boyfriend, Circuit Court Judge Gray Tollison sentenced Alexandria Griste to 20 years in the state penitentiary Tuesday morning.

Following three days of testimony, a Lafayette jury deliberated three hours before deciding on the verdict in the case of the shooting death of Griste’s boyfriend, Corey Lyles, in June 2022.

Griste did not take the stand in her defense at the trial but made a statement Tuesday at her sentencing hearing. She said she didn’t mean to hurt anyone.

“But I was protecting myself and my children,” she told Tollison.

Lyles’ mother also made a statement Tuesday saying that Lyles’ “murder” forever left holes in the hearts of her and her family and asked the judge to give Griste the maximum sentence.

According to testimony, on June 7, 2022, Griste and Lyles were arguing via text after he left the home without telling her. Griste sent a message to Lyles that if he came home, he would be “dead.” 

She retrieved a 9 mm gun from her sock drawer and waited for him to pull up where they continued to argue. She said she only wanted to warn him and make him leave the property.

Griste told investigators that Lyles was angry and was aggressively coming at her. She said she fired three warning shots but Lyles didn’t stop advancing, and then shot him in the upper left chest area through a window in their door. Lyles’ body was found several feet away from the door.

District Attorney Ben Creekmore said there was no indication that Lyles meant to harm Griste since he returned to the house with food for Griste and her two children and remained in his vehicle for several minutes. 

It was Griste who came out of the house and “stirred things up,” Creekmore said. 

“It went from a heart in a text message to a bullet in his heart,” Creekmore told the jury.

Defense attorney Steve Farese told the jury that the state did not present any evidence that proved his client was not in fear for her safety and that she had been open and cooperative with the police from the start when she called 911 to report she had shot Lyles. 

She told detectives that Lyles was an MMA fighter and she was scared and that he had hurt her before, although no evidence of past abuse was presented during the trial. She said she didn’t mean to kill him but she did mean to shoot him.

“What kind of world is it if a woman can’t protect herself and her children?” Farese said during his closing argument.

Tollison instructed the jury that Griste could be found guilty of first-degree murder, her original charge, or guilty of imperfect self-defense manslaughter, or not guilty of either. 

Imperfect self-defense is when someone kills another person due to an honest but unreasonable belief that they or someone close to them was in danger of death or great bodily injury. The 20-year sentence was the maximum allowed by law for that conviction.