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Sex Offender Guilty in Fla. Girl’s
Death
March 8, 2007
By Curt Anderson
The sex offender convicted of
kidnapping, raping and then killing 9-year-old Jessica Lunsford by
burying her alive behind his trailer could now face the death
penalty.
Jurors deliberated for about four
hours Wednesday before finding John Evander Couey guilty. They’ll
return Tuesday to consider whether he should face life in prison or
death.
‘’With capital cases, I’m all for
the death penalty. It’s an eye for an eye,'’ the girl’s father, Mark
Lunsford, said Thursday on CBS’ ‘’The Early Show.'’
Jessica was snatched from her
central Florida bedroom in February 2005 about 150 yards from the
trailer where Couey, 48, had been living. Her body was found in his
yard a month later encased in two black plastic trash bags and
buried in a shallow hole.
The little girl had been clutching
a purple stuffed dolphin when she suffocated but had managed to poke
two fingers through the bag.
Her disappearance led to a
crackdown around the country on people convicted of sex crimes.
Couey, a convicted sex offender, hadn’t told authorities he was
living near the Lunsford home even though he was required to do so.
In court Wednesday, Couey stared
straight ahead and swayed slightly as the verdicts were read on
charges of first-degree murder, sexual battery on a child,
kidnapping and burglary. Lunsford, who has helped push efforts for
tougher monitoring of sex offenders, showed no emotion.
Outside the courtroom, Lunsford
said that he knew ‘’justice would prevail'’ but that the case
wouldn’t be complete until the sentence was imposed.
Circuit Judge Richard Howard will
ultimately decide Couey’s sentence. He is not required to follow the
jury’s recommendation, but judges typically give the recommendation
great legal weight.
A psychologist testified for the
defense that Couey, who spent much of the trial drawing with colored
pencils, has signs of mental illness and mental retardation _
mitigating circumstances that could help spare him the death
penalty.
He admitted to investigators
shortly after his arrest that he committed the crime, but the
confession was thrown out because he did not have a lawyer present
as he had requested.
‘’I felt confident that we had an
overwhelming amount of facts we could present to the jury,'’ said
Brad King, chief prosecutor in the case, outside the courthouse
after the verdict.
The evidence at trial included DNA
from Jessica’s blood and Couey’s semen on a mattress in his bedroom,
as well as Jessica’s fingerprints in a closet in the trailer.
Jail guards and investigators
testified that Couey repeatedly admitted details of the slaying
after his arrest and that he insisted he had not meant to kill the
third-grader but panicked as police searched for her.
Couey had previously been arrested
in 1991 on a charge of fondling a child. In 1978, he was accused of
grabbing a girl in her bedroom, placing his hand over her mouth and
kissing her. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison in the case but
paroled in 1980.
Jessica’s killing prompted Florida
and a number of other states to pass new laws cracking down on sex
offenders and improve tracking of them through databases and
satellite positioning devices.
Mark Lunsford, Jessica’s father, is
now working with the group ‘’Stop Child Predators,'’ which advocates
for stricter penalties and an integrated nationwide sex offender
registry.
‘’I can’t get my hands on the guy
that murdered my daughter so I’ve made it my job to make the rest of
these sexual offenders and predators’ lives miserable, as miserable
as I can,'’ he said.
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