Jury foreman says Anthony Kirkland verdict based on facts
By Carrie Whitaker • cwhitaker@enquirer.com • March 17, 2010
The Enquirer/Carrie Whitaker
Anthony Kirkland, flanked by attorneys Norm Aubin and Will Welsh, waits solemnly for the jury's decision. He would soon learn that they recommended him for the death penalty.
CINCINNATI - The jury foreman did something Wednesday he never expected to do in his lifetime: He signed a piece of paper recommending the death of another human being.
It took the foreman and 11 other jurors 3½ hours to choose the death penalty for serial killer Anthony Kirkland. To the jurors, it felt much longer.
"Everybody was sympathetic to any abused child," he said, "but at the same time ... does that rise above the fact that he raped and murdered two girls and murdered two other women? Not even close. He had the opportunity to change his life, but he just liked to kill ... and he wanted to cover it up to keep killing."
Elected the jury's foreman, the man said he agreed to speak on behalf of five other jurors.
"Some people might think (the jury) did this because of the horrendous crimes and the emotions involved in it," he said. "But the verdict that we reached was based on the facts and the law."
When the jury began its deliberation the room was divided, with seven jurors leaning toward death and five toward a life sentence, he said. After rereading jury instructions and talking it out they reached their decision, he said.
One of the hardest decisions came in the first phase of the trial, when the jury found him guilty of all charges against him, including the rape and aggravated robbery of 14-year-old Casonya Crawford.
"I still wasn't convinced that he raped Casonya and took her stuff," he said.
But one of the witnesses for the prosecution - Kirkland's ex-girlfriend's daughter - changed his mind.
In her testimony she described how Kirkland exposed himself to her when she was 13, frightening her so badly that she stood in the rain outside of her home until her mother came back to the house.
“She was the witness that brought it home for us,” the juror said. “That showed that he had this predilection for young girls.”
In the end, it came down to Kirkland’s words and behavior, he said.
“During his taped confession, he talked about how he brutally murdered these women, you hear him eating food and yawning, showing no emotion,” he said. “He only cried when he was talking about himself.”
Some of the jurors also noticed Kirkland smirk when he heard himself on his taped confession say: “I (explicative) like a champ.”
“He is not remorseful, laughing about a comment you made about your sexual prowess when we’re talking about you killing a child,” he said. “That’s the moment when some of us saw truly how depraved this guy was.”
Now the juror will try to sleep. He hasn’t done much of that since the trial began. He knows he’s a changed man.
“I can’t look at wooded lots the same way without having some memory of this,” he said. “Thinking there are people like Kirkland out in the world changes your perspective to a degree,” he said.
http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20100...nd+verdict