A Cayuga County judge sentenced 46-year-old Anthony Crawford to 24½ years in state prison plus five years of post-release supervision for a brutal beating and strangulation that left his victim comatose and destroyed her spleen. Judge Jon E. Budelmann handed down the aggregate sentence on October 6, 2026, at Cayuga County Court in Auburn, closing out a case that began with a January 22, 2025 attack and ended with a jury conviction on all counts.
The sentence, confirmed in a public statement from the Cayuga County District Attorney's Office, sits just six months short of the 25-year statutory maximum for first-degree assault alone. As reported by Fingerlakes1.com, District Attorney Brittany Grome Antonacci said the attack came close to killing the victim and that the sentence holds Crawford accountable for the harm he caused.
Jurors reached their verdict in August 2026 after a four-day trial, convicting Crawford of first-degree assault, second-degree assault, and second-degree strangulation. The 12-member panel — five men and seven women — deliberated for just 54 minutes, from 10:16 a.m. to 11:10 a.m., before returning guilty verdicts on all counts, according to Fingerlakes1.com's reporting on the swift deliberation.
Injuries Prosecutors Called Life-Threatening
The Citizen reported that the beating and strangulation Crawford inflicted left the victim in a coma, underscoring the extreme medical severity of the attack. Prosecutors noted during trial that the assault also destroyed the victim's spleen, a detail that factored into the severity of the charges jurors ultimately convicted on.
Under New York Penal Law § 120.10, first-degree assault is classified as a Class B violent felony carrying a mandatory minimum of five years in state prison and a maximum of 25 years. The statute requires proof of serious physical injury, which New York Penal Law § 10.00(10) defines as harm creating a substantial risk of death or causing protracted loss or impairment of a bodily organ's function — a threshold prosecutors met by establishing the destruction of the victim's spleen.
Crawford's strangulation conviction fell under New York Penal Law § 121.12, which classifies second-degree strangulation as a Class D violent felony punishable by up to seven years in prison when intentional pressure on a victim's neck obstructs breathing or circulation and causes injury. New York created dedicated strangulation statutes specifically to address non-fatal choking in domestic violence cases.
Why Prosecutors Treat Strangulation as a Red Flag
The severity of New York's strangulation statute reflects a broader public safety concern documented by researchers. According to The SAFE Alliance, victims who survive non-fatal strangulation by an intimate partner are 750 percent more likely to be murdered by that same partner in the future. The organization notes that strangulation frequently leaves no external bruising despite causing severe internal organ or brain injuries, making it a particularly dangerous and often underdetected form of abuse.
New York's domestic-violence efforts include a $23 million Statewide Targeted Reductions in Intimate Partner Violence (STRIVE) initiative and a separate $35 million investment, described in the NYS Office for the Prevention of Domestic Violence annual domestic violence fatality report.
The Prosecution Team and the DA's Office
Senior Assistant District Attorney Heather De Stefano and Amanda Casselman handled the trial for the prosecution. Casselman was promoted to Chief of Local Courts for the Cayuga County District Attorney's Office in February 2026 after more than eight years as a prosecutor in the office.
Grome Antonacci became Cayuga County's first female District Attorney when she took office in 2022, running unopposed in her first election bid, and she launched a reelection campaign for a second term in December 2025. Her office said it will prosecute domestic violence cases to the fullest extent of the law, and Grome Antonacci expressed hope that the victim could continue healing.
