Man convicted of murdering girl in '91
Posted on 09/23/2002 6:28:32 AM PDT by MeekOneGOP
Man convicted of murdering girl in '91
Austin jurors in yogurt-shop case reject that confession was forced
09/23/2002
AUSTIN - A man who confessed to police that he shot and strangled a 13-year-old girl at an Austin yogurt shop 11 years ago was convicted Sunday of capital murder.
The decision against Michael Scott came in the Dec. 6, 1991, murder of Amy Ayers.
Jurors deliberated 22 ½ hours over three days before handing up the verdict at 2:30 p.m. Sunday to state District Judge Mike Lynch. Mr. Scott faces the death penalty or life in prison when the jury returns for the punishment phase Monday.
Amy was killed, along with Eliza Hope Thomas, 17, and sisters Jennifer and Sarah Harbison, 17 and 15, at the I Can't Believe It's Yogurt Shop where two of the girls worked. The girls were bound, gagged and shot in the head, and the store was set on fire.
Mr. Scott could also be tried for the other deaths, prosecutors said.
Jurors, who had been sequestered since Friday, asked Saturday to review the key piece of evidence against Mr. Scott - a 20-hour videotaped confession he gave to police in 1999.
Investigators said Mr. Scott provided details that only the killer would know and that some of them matched those given by a classmate at Austin McAllum High School, Robert Springsteen IV, 27, who last year was convicted and sentenced to death in the murders.
A third suspect, Maurice Pierce, 27, has been awaiting trial since police arrested the three suspects in October 1999.
Mr. Scott, 28, showed no reaction as the verdict was read, the Austin American-Statesman reported on its Web site Sunday. Neither did Amy's family.
Mr. Scott's attorneys tried unsuccessfully to have his confession excluded from trial. They said detectives intimidated Mr. Scott and fed him details of the crime scene that he later passed on in his own words.
Other parts of the confession, such as what was used to tie up the victims and where their bodies were in the shop, were wrong, defense attorney Carlos Garcia told the jury.
"These confessions don't work.. They're false. They're lies. They're the product of pressure tactics," Mr. Garcia said. "They [the police] started with a presumption of guilt and used those tactics on these boys."
Prosecutors urged jurors to reject Mr.Scott's claim that he gave police a "false confession."
"You can award this defendant an Oscar for best actor and acquit him ... or you can do what the evidence dictates and convict him," assistant prosecutor Efrain De La Fuente said Friday.
Capital punishment is too easy. He should be bound, gagged and set on fire. Skip the shooting part. Guns are bad. </sarcasm>
Catching these guys has been along time comming. Many thought since the case file was so old that there may have never been a conviction.
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