Hawthorne is already serving a 60-year term for another assault. His attorney told him he took a bad plea deal.
"Theoretically this is the highest sentence he could have gotten, 60 years from a jury. Sixty years or life. Perhaps I would like to think that he is willing to accept responsibility for the horrible acts that he did," said John Jordan, Asst. Harris County District Attorney.
In 2003, a Harris County jury wrongly convicted Ricardo Rachell for Hawthorne's crime. Rachell spent five years in prison, before DNA testing exonerated him last year.
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