<p>A couple who took an attorney hostage in his office in an incident that closed the downtown area was found guilty of kidnapping and other charges Friday.</p><p>Ogeechee Judicial Circuit Superior Court Judge F. Gates Peed sentenced Robbie Eugene Brower of Rincon, Ga., to 85 years in prison. Brower's wife, Connie Czako Brower, was sentenced to 65 years in prison.</p><p>It took a jury 3 hours and 20 minutes of deliberation to find the couple guilty of four counts of kidnapping, two counts of possession of a hoax device, two counts each of terroristic threats and possession of a firearm during the commission of a crime.</p><p>"He held the city hostage," prosecutor Richard Mallard said of Robbie Brower. "You can't overlook people doing that."</p><p>Robbie Brower, 44, was found not guilty of aggravated assault with intent to kill.</p><p>Although Connie Brower, 45, will be eligible for parole, Robbie Brower likely will serve the entire sentence because he was sentenced as a recidivist with seven prior felony convictions, Mallard said.</p><p>On Jan. 26, 2006, the couple entered attorney Michael Hostilo's law office, located in the downtown section of the small, southeast Georgia college town, and took him hostage.</p><p>Hostilo was bound in duct tape and threatened and kept in the office until the next day when the couple surrendered. Three female employees were released shortly after the couple took over Hostilo's office.</p><p>Prior to the sentencing, Robbie Brower asked the court for leniency in sentencing his wife. He told the court his main goal was to have a 1995 hammer attack conviction overturned, saying that Hostilo misrepresented him and gave him poor advice, resulting of his pleading guilty for the offense when he was not guilty.</p><p>"This was my fight, and I involved her," he said. "I'm really sorry it happened here. It wasn't an attack on Bulloch County."</p><p>Connie Brower said she had never been in trouble before.</p><p>"I would like to apologize. I know now that the way we went about it was wrong. I didn't realize how far it was going to go ... to be of this magnitude," she said. "I've never done anything like this ... but I always stuck by my husband no matter what."</p><p>Hostilo believed he would be "shot and killed on the spot," prosecutor Keith McIntyre told the jury. The couple was armed with what police thought were explosives but turned out to be fake devices that Robbie Brower made. Hostilo was found unharmed after the couple surrendered.</p><p>Police Chief Stan York previously said Robbie Brower was angry about having been convicted in a criminal case in which the Hostilo was his court-appointed attorney.</p><p>Court records reviewed by the Statesboro Herald showed that Robbbie Brower has alleged mistreatment by the courts for almost a decade, and in 1996 he held a six-day hunger strike in front of Savannah City Hall to protest. Robbie Brower also had convictions for burglary and driving under the influence.</p><p>A few hours before the suspects surrendered, the standoff briefly erupted into gunfire when the two suspects walked out of the building. At that point, the two had possibly come out to surrender, but they suddenly became apprehensive and made a threatening gesture toward law enforcement officers that prompted an exchange of gunfire, authorities said at the time.</p><p>The two then ran back into the building and authorities resumed negotiations with them.</p>
