LOCKPORT, N.Y. — A New York man has been sentenced to from 50 years to life in prison after being convicted a second time of killing a teenage couple in a barrage of gunfire when they all were high school students in 1981.
Robie Drake was tried again in March after an appeals court took issue with a key witness from his 1982 trial.
But the outcome in Niagara County Court was the same 28 years later. A jury found Drake guilty of murder in the killing 18-year-old Steven Rosenthal and 16-year-old Amy Smith.
The couple were inside Rosenthal’s parked car when Drake opened fire with a semiautomatic rifle. Drake, who was 17 at the time, claimed he thought the car was abandoned.
He was sentenced Thursday to two consecutive terms of 25 years to life. He was originally sentenced to consecutive 20-years-to-life terms.