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Carrying a picture of her murdered son, Nancy Smith asked the court impose a sentence on the man convicted in his death that would do only one thing: "I would like him to wake up every morning and go to bed every night with the same thought on his mind that weighs on mine, that is the thought of taking my son's life."

Wayne Robert Wait, 56, was sentenced Friday to 18 years in prison on a charge of second-degree murder in the Aug. 12, 2006, death of Smith's son, 39-year-old Michael "Troy" Bruce.

According to witness testimonies during Wait's trial, the incident began on Aug. 12, 2006, when Wait was watching TV at the unfinished cabin of Murray Edward "Eddie" Boring on Haven Hill Road.

Boring said Bruce came over agitated and intoxicated. Bruce asked Wait for money to buy marijuana and then kicked Wait's malt liquor drink over when Wait refused. When Boring became involved, Bruce picked up a 2-by-4-foot piece of wood and Boring knocked the wood from his hands with a metal pipe.

During the confrontation between Boring and Bruce, Wait left the cabin to retrieve a 12-gauge shotgun that he had put in a camping trailer beside the residence earlier that day. He returned and shot the gun from outside the residence into the cabin toward Bruce, who was killed when the gunshot hit him in the chest.

The defense claimed that Bruce began coming toward Wait, and Wait shot him in self-defense. The state's witnesses testified that there were no signs that Bruce was coming toward Wait and that there was no evidence to show Wait was acting in self-defense.

And after several hours of deliberation over two days, a jury returned with the guilty verdict of second-degree murder.

As a range-one offender, Wait was facing a sentence of between 15 and 25 years.

Smith was joined by her daughter, Dawn Marie Bruce, as witnesses during Wait's sentencing hearing Friday, saying the death of her brother has damaged her entire family forever.

"Losing my brother was not the only thing that we lost -- everybody in our family has been torn apart by this," Dawn Bruce said.

"I lost my son -- he's not passed away, but he's not the same," she said. "None of us are.

"Since Troy was taken, we don't have any holidays, at all."

In the end, Senior Judge Jon Kerry Blackwood found that previous arrests were a mitigating factor in determining Wait's sentence and he did not give the man the minimum amount of jail time -- though at 18 years, he did not give him the maximum, either.

During the hearing, Wait indicated that he was planning to appeal his conviction.