In this file photo released on Aug. 30, 2009 by the Glynn County Police Department, Guy Heinze Jr. is shown. Glynn County Police Chief Matt Doering said two new pieces of information led authorities to charge Heinze late Friday Sept. 4, 2009. After a week working a case so murky they could not say whether a killer was on the loose, police said Guy Heinze Jr. was responsible for the slayings he reported and charged him with eight counts of first-degree murder. Among the dead were seven of his rel | AP
Huffington Post (old news but I missed it last year)
Dressed in orange jailhouse garb rather than the suit he wore at trial, Guy Heinze Jr. bowed his head as a judge sentenced him to life in prison with no chance of parole. A quirk of legal maneuvering had spared Heinze from a possible death sentence for the 2009 beating deaths of his father and seven others.
Relatives of the victims said they never wanted to see Heinze executed.
"That's the easy way out," said Diane Isenhower, whose ex-husband and four children were among the eight people beaten to death four years ago inside a cramped mobile home they shared with Heinze.
"From day one, we told them, 'No death penalty,'" said Hazel Sumner, who identified herself as a cousin to Isenhower's family.
Heinze, 26, was sentenced Thursday afternoon in Glynn County Superior Court less than a week after a jury convicted him of malice murder in the Aug. 29, 2009, slayings. Prosecutors dropped the death penalty as an option last week as part of a last-minute deal with defense attorneys that allowed them to avoid a hung jury.
Prosecutors said Heinze had been smoking crack cocaine when he killed his father and the other victims, all members of an extended family. They said he killed the first victim in a dispute over a bottle of prescription painkillers he wanted to steal, then killed the others to avoid getting caught.
Each of the victims died from multiple crushing blows to the head from what police believe was a shotgun barrel, jurors heard. Autopsies showed they suffered a combined total of more than 220 wounds. The murder weapon was never found.
Although the attack happened in the night and most of the victims were found in bed, defense attorneys argued a single assailant couldn't possibly have inflicted such carnage. They insisted that Heinze would not kill loved ones over a bottle of weak prescription pills and that police ignored evidence and alternate suspects in a rush to accuse him.
Heinze had told police he found the victims' bodies after returning from a late night away from home.
That is a really weird trick. I wonder if this is a normal thing that can be done as a matter of course, or if its unique to the Georgia court system. Perhaps our resident legal scholars can throw in and answer that.
ReplyDeleteIts not surprising you missed it considering the only way a firearm was involved was it being used as a club.
I made several posts about this case when it broke. I can't believe he's been convicted. There was an interview with his younger brother that was so powerful and convincing. But mainly it's what the lawyer said. How could one man do that?
DeleteNot guilty!!
ReplyDelete