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Relative: Barnette 'should have been sentenced to death'
YOUNGSTOWN
A relative of the victims of a double-suffocation murder expressed disappointment with the jury’s recommendation of life without parole for convicted murderer Lorenza Barnette.
“I don’t feel that he deserved to even get a chance at life. My cousins, before they died, begged for their lives. The way that they were killed was horrendous,” said Quiana Bills of Atlanta, first cousin of the victims.
“He should have been sentenced to death. He showed no remorse,” Bills added.
Before giving their recommendation Tuesday afternoon, the jurors deliberated for two hours whether Barnette, 29, should live or die without having heard any testimony in the case’s penalty phase.
Defense lawyers rested their case after opening statements Tuesday morning without presenting any witnesses.
Judge Maureen A. Sweeney of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court gave final instructions, and the jurors began deliberating at 12:35 p.m.
Judge Sweeney will sentence Barnette at 10 a.m. today.
The same jury convicted Barnette last week of aggravated murder with death-penalty specifications, kidnapping and arson, in the deaths of the two men more than two years ago, but the panel acquitted him of aggravated robbery.
Barnette, of Lora Avenue, is one of three defendants in the deaths of Jaron L. Roland, 20, of Fairmont Avenue, and his cousin, Darry B. Woods Burt Jr., 19, of the city’s North Side.
The victims were found dead Aug. 11, 2009, in a burning car by the Mahoning River off West Avenue, their heads encased in plastic bags and duct tape, without cash, cellular phones or identification.
Barnette’s co-defendants, Kenneth Moncrief, 26, of Fairgreen Avenue, and Joseph Moreland, 28, of Mahoning County jail, who also face the death penalty, are scheduled for jury trials before Judge Sweeney on Nov. 8 and Feb. 13, respectively.
The judge instructed the jurors to weigh the aggravating circumstances against any mitigating circumstances in determining Barnette’s fate.
She told them their choices were the death penalty or one of three life prison-term options: life without parole; life with parole eligibility after 30 years; or life with parole eligibility after 25 years.
Because the jury opted for life, Judge Sweeney cannot impose a death sentence.
The death-penalty specifications, which became aggravating circumstances in the penalty phase, said Barnette purposely killed two people and that he did so while committing kidnapping.
In her opening statement in the penalty phase, Dawn Cantalamessa, an assistant county prosecutor, asked the jurors to opt for the death penalty because she said the state had proved beyond a reasonable doubt the aggravating circumstances outweigh any mitigating factors.
Defense lawyer Ronald Yarwood asked the jurors to opt for one of the life sentences because Barnette has no significant prior criminal record and could conform to prison life.
The lead defense lawyer, J. Gerald Ingram, declined to comment after court.
Rebecca Doherty, chief of the county prosecutor’s criminal division, said she believes the defense called no witnesses in the penalty phase because doing so likely would have been detrimental to Barnette.
“There was nothing that was mitigating in our opinion. He had a fairly normal childhood. His parents didn’t divorce until he was 18. This was his choice to go the direction that he went,” Doherty said.