It took jurors less than 30 minutes Friday to reject the death penalty for capital...
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Airman's killer gets life sentence, without parole
By
Craig Kapitan
Updated Aug 24, 2012 11:56 p.m.
PHOTO
Charles Pitts speaks Friday morning Aug. 23, 2012 in Judge Melisa Skinner's 290th State District Court as he addresses his daughter's killer, Lorenzo Leroy Thompson, 23, during a victim impact statement after Thompson was given life in prison without parole for the death of Vanessa Marie Pitts, 25.
William Luther/San Antonio Express-News
It took jurors less than 30 minutes Friday to reject the death penalty for capital murder convict
Lorenzo Thompson, who instead will serve life in prison without parole for the bizarre killing two years ago of an Air Force basic training graduate he had just mugged.
“You had many chances to save my daughter's life,”
Charles Pitts told Thompson in a victim impact statement that followed the sentencing decision. “You have no sympathy for my daughter at all. Do you even care?”
Defendants usually are barred from responding to victim impact statements but Thompson did, speaking aloud for the first time since declaring himself not guilty at the start of testimony earlier this week.
“I do care,” he said of
Vanessa Marie Pitts, who was 25 when she died on a U.S. 90 access road in April 2010, down the street from a West Side gas station where her purse was taken.
“It was an accident, and I believe the only reason I got convicted was because she was in the Air Force. I am sorry.”
Quietly, Charles Pitts responded, “I don't believe you.”
Thompson, 23, was arrested days after the incident and told police repeatedly he never intended to kill Vanessa Pitts, who jumped on the outside of his stolen truck at the gas station.
Witnesses said he then peeled out of the gas station with Pitts still hanging on and screaming.
She was ejected from the side of the vehicle after Thompson hit another truck — an act prosecutors, and ultimately jurors, believed was intentional.
“It's not the type of crime you'd see planned out where someone takes a pistol into a 7-11 and shoots the clerk,” defense attorney
Michael Gross said Friday morning during the punishment phase of the trial. “It's just not a death penalty case.”
QUEUE THE VIOLINS
Gross also pointed repeatedly to his client's “miserable” upbringing in Louisiana, where he said Thompson dealt with an absent biological father and an abusive stepfather who chased his mother around with a knife when angry and once sold the boy's Christmas presents.
He called it “incredible” that no family members stopped Thompson at age 12 from stealing things so he could help pay the utility bills.
“No one comes in and sits behind Lorenzo” in court, Gross pointed out. “Lorenzo never had any positive structure in his life.”
To have sentenced Thompson to death, 10 or more jurors would have had to determine that he would be a continuing threat to society — in this case, “society” being the prison population, since the only other option was life without parole.
If jurors found he was a threat, then they would have needed to decide if his background, character or circumstances of the offense mitigated imposition of the death sentence.
Jurors never got to the second question in their 25 minutes of deliberation. They found he wouldn't be a continuing threat.
In his closing argument, prosecutor
David Lunan made it clear he felt otherwise — pointing to Thompson's escape from a juvenile facility in Louisiana at age 16, his alleged threat of a fellow inmate in Bexar County Jail and a fight he got into a one month after being incarcerated to await trial for the capital murder charge.
“Prison, like the jail, is a powder keg and we need people who are not going to stir things up,” Lunan said. “I heard no evidence of good character about this man. You would think if there was anything positive about this person you would have heard it.”
The trial marked the fourth failed attempt in a row to obtain the death penalty in Bexar County. The last death sentence handed down here was in 2009.
However, jury selection is now under way for another death penalty trial — that of
James Davis Morrison, alleged to have killed his ex-girlfriend's mother, sister and unborn child.
Outside the courtroom Friday, Charles Pitts and his wife, Maria, said they bear no grudge against the jury for making a hard decision.
“I personally don't think I would have given him life,” he told reporters as Thompson was escorted out of 290th state District Court surrounded by deputies. “That was my only daughter. I will never, ever get to replace her.”