Jury to resume Monday in Craigslist case

Associated Press

AKRON

An Ohio jury has concluded deliberations for the day in the case of a teenager accused of participating in the slayings of three men lured by phony Craigslist job offers.

Prosecutors have portrayed defendant Brogan Rafferty as a full accomplice in the crimes.

The 17-year-old Rafferty faces life in prison without chance of parole if convicted of aggravated murder in the shooting deaths of the men last year.

One man was killed near Akron and two more in rural eastern Ohio.

A fourth man was shot in eastern Ohio but survived.

The 12-person Akron jury met all day Friday and will resume deliberations Monday morning.

Rafferty’s lawyer said he was a scared child stuck in a horrible situation and afraid that, if he rebelled, he and his family would be killed.

Jurors weighing Rafferty’s fate began their first full day of deliberations Friday after getting the case the afternoon before.

Rafferty’s co-defendant, Richard Beasley, who has pleaded not guilty and will be tried separately, could face the death penalty if convicted. As a juvenile, Rafferty can’t be sentenced to death.

In closing arguments Thursday, prosecutors portrayed Rafferty as someone who knew exactly what he was doing and ignored opportunities to go to police.

“Although Richard Beasley is a murderer and liar, he was brutally honest with one person. One person knew everything that he was doing. Just one. And that was Brogan Rafferty,” assistant Summit County prosecutor John Baumoel told jurors. “Brogan Rafferty knew each and every one of his dark secrets.”

He pointed jurors to Internet searches Rafferty did after the first slaying for the term “first kill” and “Sopranos’ first whack,” referring to the TV show about a New Jersey mafia family. And he down played arguments the defense had made that Rafferty was the product of a tough childhood: his mother a drug addict on the streets, his father rarely around as he worked long hours to support the family.