| | | A judge with sense! The only issue is that he's only one of millions of violent criminals in our midst and it will take many years for the criminal injustice system to finally kill the ba$tard. Instead, capital punishment of violent criminals should total in the thousands each day until society becomes habitable again.
Courtney Lockhart, convicted of murdering Auburn student Lauren Burk, sentenced to die
blog.al.com
excerpt:
A judge on Wednesday overrode the unanimous recommendation of jurors and sentenced a man to die for the slaying of an Auburn University freshman who was abducted at gunpoint, fatally shot and left to die on a rural road.
Lee County Circuit Judge Jacob Walker imposed the sentence on Courtney Lockhart, 26, of Smith Station, who was convicted of capital murder last year in the 2008 killing of Lauren Burk, 18, of Marietta, Ga.
The jury voted 12-0 to recommend a sentence of life without parole for Lockhart, a veteran of the Iraq War, but the judge has the final say under Alabama law. Walker decided Lockhart should be put to death, noting that the man was suspected in other crimes that jurors didn't know about.
Lockhart's mother screamed out and cried when the judge sentenced her son to death by lethal injection. She had to be comforted by relatives.
Lockhart will receive an automatic appeal under state law.
Evidence showed Burk was kidnapped from a campus parking lot at Auburn on March 4, 2008, after visiting her boyfriend. Prosecutors said Lockhart forced her to disrobe and shot her in the back as she tried to escape from the moving vehicle, then left her to die.
During the trial, defense lawyers argued that Lockhart was mentally troubled and didn't mean for the gun to go off.
The victim's father, Jim Burk of Marietta, made an emotional appeal asking Walker to overturn the jury's recommendation of a life sentence. Recalling his daughter's final moments, he described Lockhart as a coward.
"You killed her, she's not here, and you are here. That's the bottom line," said Burk, adding that Lockhart still has his own daughter.
Seated at the defense table, Lockhart responded loudly.
"Don't bring my daughter into this. You are not going to bring my daughter into this," said Lockhart, wearing a loose-fitting dark suit but no handcuffs or shackles. "I'm sorry for your whole family."
Burk responded quietly: "I wish you hadn't brought my daughter into it."
Speaking to a nearly full courtroom, Walker said Lockhart was suspected in a string of five robberies that occurred in southeast Alabama and west Georgia around the same time as the slaying, but jurors did not hear about those crimes during the murder trial.
"It is the court's opinion that this would have undermined the jury's decision" for life without parole, he said, sentencing Lockhart to die. The judge continued talking, but his words were drowned out by screams from Lockhart's mother.
Defense lawyer Jeremy Armstrong said he was disappointed in the death penalty, which he suggested would only prolong the case for the Burk family since appeals can last as long as 25 years.
"The override will get more scrutiny on appeal," he said.
Outside court, Lauren's mother, Viviane Guerchon, said her daughter loved trees and babies and was planning a career in photography and marketing.
"The pain will be going on for ever," she said. |
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