WICHITA, Kan. — Reginald and Jonathan Carr, the brothers who murdered four people on a snow-covered soccer field after forcing them to engage in sex acts with each other, have been sentenced to die.
A judge condemned the pair Friday, one day after the jury that found them guilty of capital murder recommended the sentence.
Reginald Carr, 25, and his brother Jonathan, 22, showed no visible emotion when the judge pronounced the decision.
The judge also sentenced both to life in prison with no possibility of parole for 20 years in the death of another woman. Reginald also was sentenced to 47 years in prison for his conviction on other crimes, and Jonathan was sentenced to 41 years on other convictions.
The sole survivor of a Dec. 15, 2000, shooting that left her four friends dead told the court, "The sentence imposed on them will be a much kinder sentence than they imposed on me, my friends, and family."
When the jury delivered its verdict Thursday, Mark Befort, a brother of one of the victims, sarcastically wished Reginald Carr a "happy birthday" followed by an expletive as he was being led away. Carr's response was laced with profanity.
Carr's left hand was heavily bandaged. Authorities said he broke it Thursday morning while defending himself when a fellow inmate attacked him in a holding area.
The Carrs had been convicted last week of capital murder in the deaths of three men and a woman shot and killed execution-style in December 2000 as they knelt in a snow-covered soccer field. A second woman who survived although shot in the head ran naked through the snow to seek help. She was among key witnesses at the trial, which began more than two months ago.
The five friends were in a Wichita home when two armed intruders forced them to engage in sex with each other, then made them withdraw money from automatic teller machines. The two women were raped repeatedly before the five were taken to the soccer field and shot.
The Carrs were also convicted of first-degree murder in the death of a woman fatally wounded when she was shot four days before the soccer field shootings.
In all, the Carrs were convicted of 93 counts, 50 for Reginald and 43 for his brother. Most of those counts involved sexual crimes tied to the quadruple killings.
The brothers were sentenced Friday by Sedgwick County District Judge Paul Clark on the 85 non-capital crimes of which they are convicted. The woman who survived the soccer field shooting and relatives of the victims also testified about the impact the crimes had on their lives.
Many family members of the victims held hands with each other as the verdicts were read Thursday. Outside the courthouse, they tearfully hugged District Attorney Nola Foulston, but declined comment.
"The verdict was based on a justice system that worked," said Foulston. She said several of the jurors asked for e-mail addresses of the victims' relatives so they could express sympathy to them.
The mother, sister, brothers and a friend of the Carrs also held hands as the verdicts were announced, and blinked back tears. As the brothers were led away, the women shouted: "I love you."
Kansas has not had any executions since it reinstated the death penalty in 1994. Judges in four cases where juries called for death followed their recommendations. On Nov. 2 a jury in Johnson County recommended death for a man convicted of capital murder in the deaths of two women whose bodies were found in barrels on his property as well as first-degree murder in the death of another woman who disappeared in 1985 and has never been found.
The jurors who heard testimony in the penalty phase of the Carr trial this week spent about seven hours deliberating their verdicts.
Juror Joe Wendell said later that the pictures of the four bodies in the soccer field will never leave his mind.
"It makes me look at life in a different perspective," he said.
Wendell declined to discuss specifics about the deliberations, but said, "It was emotional because you can't look and decide someone's fate without feeling some emotion."
Jay Greeno, attorney for Reginald Carr, sat quietly outside the judge's office after the proceedings, and said, "You always feel bad."
In appealing to the jurors for mercy, the defense attorneys asked them to consider that the Carrs were the products of an abusive household and that Reginald has three young children.
"There is no excuse for an individual's conduct," Foulston said after the verdicts were announced. "You can't blame your family for what went wrong in your life."
The soccer field victims were Aaron Sander, 29, Brad Heyka, 27, Jason Befort, 26, and Heather Muller, 25. The woman who died later of injuries suffered in the earlier shooting was Ann Walenta, 55, a cellist with the Wichita Symphony.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
NOW,
PLEASE DO NOT SCREW AROUND FOR 6 YEARS APPEALING THIS....TAKE THEM OUT AND HANG THEIR STUPID NIGGER ASSES, AND BE DONE WITH IT.
Posts: 771 | From: Farmington | Registered: Oct 2000
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