Britanny Norwood Convicted of Killing Jayna Murray
On Wednesday evening, November 2nd, Brittany Norwood was found guilty of the first-degree murder of co-worker Jayna Murray in the Lululemon Bethesda killing trial. With the verdict reached, the disturbing saga which began in March can now come to a close.
Here are some of the facts from the trial, the factors the jurors used to make the decision, and more:
* The Lululemon killing trial lasted for six days, and jury deliberation took just one hour.
* The guilty verdict here could lead to Norwood facing life in prison without parole. She will be sentenced on January 27, 2012.
* Jurors were told to consider both first-degree and second-degree murder charges.
* Murray had 331 stabbing, cutting, beating and choking wounds on her body. Prosecutor John McCarthy told jurors to imagine that as one wound inflicted every three seconds for a full 16 minutes.
* This proved to be a major deciding factor for the jury, who agreed with prosecutors that there were many opportunities where Norwood could have stopped; however, she willingly persisted with her brutal, vicious and long attack.
* Prosecutors never provided jurors with a motive for the killing, instead focusing on the sheer brutality of the attack, recreating how and when the murder took place in complete, gory detail.
* Norwood’s team never denied she killed Murray. Instead, they were trying to argue that she “was not in her right state of mind”, and that the killing was not planned. They had originally hoped to fully plead for insanity. Norwood’s attorneys did not call any witnesses during the trial.
* The first murmurs of the story were that two masked men had killed and raped Murray, while Norwood survived the attack. That left Bethesda residents in shock, as I wrote in March, of the prospect of two killers on the loose. That theory was quickly debunked as Norwood’s story was filled with holes and inconsistencies, and soon thereafter she was arrested for the crime.
* The jury consisted of six men and six women. The trial took place in the Rockville courthouses, approximately nine miles from where the murders took place, under the watch of judge Robert Greenberg.
* The Lululemon store in Bethesda was closed for several months after the murder, but has since reopened in its original location, with a new stained-glass storefront.
* Jayna Murray has been commemorated in Bethesda with candlelight vigils, 5K run/walk events held in her name, and more.
This article was first published by Jake Emen on Yahoo! News on November 3, 2011
