By Mark Coddington
mark.coddington@theindependent.com

Randy Harms, 49, was sentenced to 35 to 40 years in prison for attempted first-degree murder and 10 to 20 years for use of a firearm to commit a felony. The two terms are to be served one after the other.

Harms was arrested in February 2007 at the home of his wife, Diane Glenn, southeast of Broken Bow, after she reported that he had shot her.

He fired a rifle through a window into her house, then broke into the house and hit her with the butt of the gun before police arrived.

He was found guilty by a jury in January. But at Thursday's sentencing, Custer County District Judge Karin Noakes overruled motions by Harms' attorney, Steve Potter of Gothenburg, to postpone sentencing and reconvene the jury for questioning about juror misconduct.

Potter argued in an affidavit that extraneous and prejudicial information had influenced the jury's deliberations when a doctor on the jury made statements to other jurors about his medical opinion that Glenn's facial injuries had to have been caused by a bullet rather than shattered glass.

But Noakes ruled that the doctor's statements couldn't be ruled extraneous because they came from among the jurors themselves and not through an external source.

Potter has also filed a motion for a new trial. That motion will be heard next month.

Glenn, who is now divorced from Harms, made a livid statement before the sentencing, drawing a warning from Noakes for her language.

"Randy's never been a good man. He's never been a nice man," Glenn said. "I just want him to pay for what he did."

Some of her harshest words were directed toward Harms, who sat facing her about 15 feet away.

"That was your intention, to try to kill me," she said. "I knew that."

Harms showed little emotion as Noakes read his sentence, but several family members seated behind him in the courtroom wept loudly during the pronouncement.

During the trial, prosecuting attorneys argued that Harms had been planning all day to kill his wife, while Potter tried to show that Harms was suicidal and had only been hoping to scare Glenn.