Jun. 17—An Edgewood man was sentenced Monday to 15 years in prison following his conviction in April of second-degree murder for fatally stabbing his mother in 2022.

Brian Farley, 53, maintained his innocence at his sentencing hearing. He claimed his mother had taken her own life after revealing to him he was abused as a child by a family member.

“I remain unclear as to what evidence was relied upon to convict me of second-degree murder,” Farley said.

Police responding to his 911 call, in which he reported his mother had been hurting herself with a knife, found 87-year-old Felita Marlene Farley dead in a pool of blood on the bathroom floor. She had multiple stab wounds.

Brian Farley, who was intoxicated when officers arrived, told them his mother had tried to shoot him with a gun and he had to protect himself.

However, evidence presented at Farley’s trial indicated he had broken down the bathroom door to get to his mother as she was attempting to hide. The state also argued a gun found on her bed fell to pieces when they tried to move it and was “basically inoperable.”

Farley was charged with first-degree murder, but jurors convicted him of the lesser charge of second-degree murder.

“I implore this court to make my sentence commensurate with the amount of evidence that proves beyond a reasonable doubt that I’ve actually committed a crime at all,” Farley said at Monday’s hearing, arguing he had no scratches on his body or blood on his clothes when police arrived.

Farley had tried to clean the scene, and the house reeked of bleach when police arrived, according to testimony. A bloody knife was in the kitchen sink.

“Now is not the time for me to shrink away in cowering defeat due to a misguided verdict from a misinformed jury,” Farley told the court Monday. “I owe it to my mom to remain strong and resolute in my declaration of innocence. I did not kill my mom. My mom killed herself, and as difficult as that may be to hear, it’s true.”

State District Judge T. Glenn Ellington, who had presided over Farley’s trial, on Monday called his claim that his mother had taken her own life “laughable.”

The judge said he still remembered seeing photos of the defensive wounds on Marlene Farley’s body, particularly one showing the webbing of her hand cut open to the bone.

“The only way a wound like that can happen is if somebody grabs the knife trying to defend themselves, and that knife is pulled out of their hand and slices the flesh all the way to down to the joint,” the judge said.

Farley’s presentencing elocution included statements about his own history, including that he’d been born to a drug-addicted mother and later was adopted — along with his two older brothers — by the Farley family.

He spoke of his struggle with substance abuse and said he’d cared for his late father and mother for the past 10 years.

The judge said he found Farley’s statements self-serving, delusional and evidence of his inability to take responsibility.

“Despite all the verbiage, I listened to and wrote down basically three arguments that you were making,” Ellington told Farley.

“The first argument is, ‘I’m good.’ The second argument … is, ‘I’m benevolent.’ And the third argument that you made repeatedly, over and over and over again, is, ‘I’m the victim,’ ” the judge said.

He added, “Sir, in my opinion … I conclude that you have a distorted view of reality, both historically and particularly with respect to the events of this particular evening.”

Several family members spoke at the hearing, asking the court to sentence Farley to the maximum 15 years.

Deputy District Attorney Anthony Long also advocated for the maximum sentence, noting the rarity of matricide and the number and severity of the wounds inflicted upon Marlene Farley by her son. One stab wound to her chest was done with such force, Long wrote in a sentencing memo, it fractured her rib.

“It’s difficult to comprehend how someone could savagely brutalize one of the people that helped to raise him,” Long wrote.

Farley’s defense attorney, Jonathan Schildgen, said there are still unanswered questions in the case. If Farley’s mother disclosed on the night of her death that she’d failed to protect him from a sexual assault by a family member, “there is some explanatory power in that,” he said.

Schildgen compared today’s judicial system to medieval times, when convicted criminals were executed in public and the community saw up close the consequences of conviction.

“We used to punish the body in public … and the community was involved, and now we just torture the soul in private,” he said.