Marino Leyba Jr. will spend the next 62 years behind bars without the possibility of parole for the May 2009 killings of his pregnant girlfriend and her father.

The 23-year-old Santa Fe man briefly apologized for his crimes before his sentencing Tuesday. But neither Leyba nor any of his family showed much emotion after state District Judge Michael Vigil pronounced the sentence.

"I think this crime was so horrific it does deserve the maximum consecutive sentences," Vigil said before handing down two life sentences, plus an extra two years. "I cannot understand how Sarah (Lovato) was a threat to you at all. I can never understand why you killed Sarah."

Under New Mexico law, a life sentence equals 30 years in prison without parole, although no one who has served the 30 years has ever been allowed out of prison.

In May, a Santa Fe County jury found Leyba guilty of two counts of first-degree murder, and one count each of aggravated burglary and tampering with evidence.

Leyba testified in his own defense, admitting that he used a handgun that he carried as a private security guard to shoot Benny Lovato, 50, three times on May 22, 2009. He said he thought his girlfriend's father had a gun and wanted to shoot him after Leyba barged into the Lovatos' south-side apartment.

Leyba also admitted pursuing and shooting 17-year-old Sarah Lovato three times because, he said, he thought she was running to the kitchen for a knife. One of those shots penetrated the teen's uterus, killing the unborn boy she had carried for eight months.

Prosecutors said Leyba stalked and abused Sarah Lovato both mentally and physically before the murder, and planned to kill her and her father because she had recently broken off their relationship.

Leyba's lawyer, Gary Mitchell, blamed the killings on his client's alleged mental disorder that hindered him from processing information in complex, changing situations. Mitchell badmouthed jurors after the verdict, saying they didn't read or understand "complicated (legal) instructions about mental health."

On Tuesday, Mitchell reiterated his belief that society doesn't adequately treat mental illness in its ranks.

"I take issue with the state making light of the mental health concerns in this case," he said. "The law hasn't caught up with the science."

In asking the judge to impose the consecutive life sentences, prosecutor Cynthia Hill said Leyba was found competent to stand trial and "had a full understanding of what he was doing."

Vigil seemed to agree with her, saying later that he understood the mental issues involved in the case but remained unconvinced that they were entirely to blame for the killings.

None of Leyba's family members spoke at Tuesday's hearing. Numerous Lovato family members, however, addressed the court and urged the judge to impose the maximum sentence.

Nick Lovato showed the judge a slide show of images of his sister and father and read statements from other family members. His older brother, Benny Lovato Jr., said in one of the statements that his family will never be the same because of the murders.

"I feel angry and hurt, but mostly alone," Benny Lovato Jr. said in the statement read by his brother.

In another statement, Linda Lovato, Sarah Lovato's mother, called the crimes "unforgivable" and said it feels as if their world ended, too, when their loved ones were killed.

Most heartbreaking, perhaps, was Julie Lovato, Sarah's 16-year-old sister, who had left the apartment mere seconds before the killings.

"This really changed my life," she said. "The two people I cared about with my entire heart are gone. I feel left behind."

She said she has had to move in with other family members, who "think I only brought other problems to my other family."

"I feel like an outsider with them and I don't fit in," Julie Lovato said.

Contact Jason Auslander at 986-3076 or jauslander@sfnewmexican.com.