A Garden Grove man sat motionless in court Friday as he was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for killing his girlfriend by injecting her with a lethal dose of cocaine.

Shawn Lawrence Putansu, 29, received that penalty because he was convicted of the special circumstances first-degree murder by poison of Melissa Sue Mitchell, an up-and-coming criminal defense attorney.

Mitchell, 30, was found floating face down in a hot tub at her Laguna Niguel home on May 21, 2004, with a fatal dose of cocaine in her system.

Putansu later confessed as he threatened to commit suicide by jumping nude from the roof of a high-rise apartment, telling police officers: "I gave that rich girl two spoons of cocaine. . I knew she would die. I wanted her to die."

Superior Court Judge William Froeberg handed down the sentence after Patsy Sweeney, a friend of the victim, told him that Mitchell was at a vulnerable stage when Putansu entered her life.

"Evil swooped in at that time and now she is gone," Sweeney said.

But Assistant Public Defender Denise Gragg countered, "Mr. Putansu is not an evil man. He's a kid who screwed up. . He is a human being who had a drug problem."

Mitchell worked as a criminal lawyer out of a home in Los Angeles and at a Fountain Valley office she shared with several other lawyers. One of her clients was Jorge Salazar Solis - known as "El Gordo" - accused in 2003 of machine-gunning to death Mexican Sen. Jose Manuel Diaz Medina.