San Diego

Glen Cornist, the former operator of a halfway house for state inmates, was sentenced Thursday to 12 years in prison for the attempted murder of his ex-wife.

Municipal Judge William Mudd handed down the sentence after rejecting a request for a new trial made by Cornist’s attorney, public defender Michael Sideman.

Cornist, 47, was convicted Feb. 11 of attempting to murder Barbara Cornist, 44, who was shot once outside a Southeast San Diego restaurant in October. She was treated at a hospital and released the same night.

Glen Cornist is the founder of Model Ex-Offenders Inc., a re-entry program that opened in the 1970s and has a contract to house prisoners during the last 90 days of their term. Deputy Dist. Atty. Dan Lamborn said Cornist no longer has official ties to the program.

Cornist first made headlines in 1986 when he hoodwinked a judge into sentencing him to another corrections program that he had founded. When the judge discovered he had been duped, he angrily sentenced Cornist to 120 days in jail.

On Thursday, Sideman argued that his client deserved a new trial because Barbara Cornist was unavailable to testify during her ex-husband’s trial. Instead, prosecutors relied on a transcript from Cornist’s preliminary hearing in building their case.

Mudd said there was no new evidence in the case and that a new trial was unnecessary.