http://story.news.yahoo.c...MlJVRPUCUl


By PAM EASTON, Associated Press Writer
2 hours, 46 minutes ago



SAN ANTONIO - A man was convicted of murder Wednesday for smothering his girlfriend's 6-year-old son and stuffing the boy's body in an oven last year.


Kenneth Pierott, 28, faces up to 99 years in prison. He showed no emotion as the verdict was read.

Testimony in the sentencing phase of the trial begins Thursday. Prosecutors did not say what type of punishment they would seek.

"We're just happy to know it was a guilty verdict," the boy's mother, Kathy Odoms, said as she left the courthouse.

Pierott's mother, Urestine Pierott, said she was "going to stick by my son."

"I know he's mentally disturbed and I'm going to keep on praying for him," she said.

Jurors deliberated for just under four hours before rejecting the defense's argument that Pierott was mentally ill and didn't know smothering the child was wrong.

The defense had presented evidence in the two-day trial that Pierott sometimes thought he was God, believed others could read his mind and killed Tre-Devin Odoms in Beaumont in April 2004 to protect his then-2-year-old son with his former girlfriend, Kathy Odoms.

Two court-appointed experts who evaluated Pierott had determined he was insane at the time of the killing.

"I believe you have heard from every single witness that he believed what he was doing was right," defense attorney Raquel Galle said in her closing.

Prosecutors, however, told jurors that Pierott waited until Kathy Odoms fell asleep before smothering Tre-Devin, then left the house to pretend to look for the boy when Odoms awoke.

In his closing argument, prosecutor Ed Shettle urged jurors to consider Pierott's actions in determining whether he was insane.

"Everybody wants to say, 'Well, it's not a rational act.' Hell, no, it's not a rational act," Shettle said. "It's the act of a mentally ill person who, in his own sick way, is trying to get away with it."

During the trial, prosecutors wheeled into the courtroom the beat-up oven in which Tre-Devin's body was found, lying in a fetal position. Police said the oven had all its burners on and the oven temperature turned to 600 degrees, but the oven did not heat because the pilot light wasn't lit.

Pierott was earlier found innocent by reason of insanity in the 1996 fatal beating of his sister, who suffered from cerebral palsy. Stephanie Pierott, 25, weighed only 43 pounds when Pierott beat her with a dumbbell so severely that he displaced her eyeballs and crushed her skull. He spent about four months in a state mental hospital in 1998 before he was released.

Jurors did not hear of his acquittal in the case. It will also be inadmissible during the sentencing phase.
[Edited 5/11/05 22:50pm]

Okay. I want you to stop posting news for the night, or it won't be news tomorrow. or some shit. i'm tired. cut it out. you're depressing me.

GlitterStream said:

why you hatin'?