Jury in Patterson capital murder trial resumes deliberations today

After nearly three hours of deliberations and listening to another full day of courtroom drama Wednesday, the jury sent out a handwritten note.

"May we retire for the evening?" it read. "We've reached a conclusion on counts one and two."

When asked if they would prefer a dinner break and the opportunity to continue their discussions, their answer was: "We prefer to quit for the day, please."

And so the wait for a verdict continues at least one more day in the capital murder trial of Ryan Patterson, with the nine women and three men from Pemiscot County apparently having come to at least a partial conclusion about the defendant's guilt or innocence.

Counts one and two are first-degree murder charges Patterson faces in the 2009 shootings of Jamie Lynn Orman and her 15-year-old son, Derrick. Count three, the one the jury is still apparently struggling with, is for the fetus Orman was pregnant with at the time of her death.

Judge William Syler said he put the two answered verdict forms in a sealed envelope and that even he wasn't going to look at them.

"I don't know what they are, and I don't intend to find out," he said.

Syler cautioned that after deliberations resume at 9 a.m. today, those conclusions could change.

The jury listened to arguments for more than two days until they retired to deliberate shortly after 3 p.m. Wednesday in a room just off the courtroom at the Cape Girardeau County Courthouse in Jackson.

Shortly after retiring, the jury asked for a transcript to a 90-minute interview that Patterson gave police the night following the murder. After some bickering between Prosecuting Attorney Morley Swingle and Patterson's defense team of Robert Steele and David Kenyon, Judge William Syler opted to let the jury have the transcripts.

Prosecutors hope jurors return at some point with a guilty verdict for three counts of first-degree murder in what they have described as a botched conspiracy to kill for as much as $400,000 in insurance money.

But defense attorneys have worked to cast reasonable doubt on that theory. The defense has suggested it was Samuel "Ray Ray" Hughes who committed the murder and not their client.

The jury could come back with a verdict of less than first-degree murder, which would remove the death penalty from the equation. During instructions, Syler told jurors that first-degree murder means that the defendant caused the death of Jamie Orman, Derrick Orman and her unborn fetus, knew it was "practically certain" his actions would cause their deaths and he acted with deliberation "or cool reflection," for any amount of time, however brief.

Verdicts of second-degree murder, commonly called felony murder when they're of this type, could be returned if jurors didn't buy the conspiracy charge and believe Patterson was committing a burglary and killed the victims without premeditation. The jury will also weigh a voluntary manslaughter charge for the killing of Jamie Orman's unborn child.

An investigator with the public defender's office said before the proceedings began that he had reviewed KFVS12's raw footage and Monday's broadcast tapes and that no juror was identifiable on camera. A juror had claimed Tuesday that her husband saw her as part of KFVS12's murder trial coverage, prompting the defense to ask for a mistrial, which was denied.

Before deliberation, the jury heard the defense make its case for less than an hour before it rested. After lunch, they heard lawyers on both sides make their closing statements.

"Murder comes in many shapes and sizes, and some murders are worse than others," Swingle said during his closing. "And this one is among the worst -- a coldblooded and bone-chilling multiple murder."

As he has all week, Swingle tried to convince jurors that Patterson went to the home of John Lawrence on North Missouri Avenue to kill him and burn his home so Patterson and his then-girlfriend Michelle Lawrence could collect insurance money on policies listing her as the beneficiary. John and Michelle Lawrence were getting a divorce.

Ryan Patterson committed the crimes, Swingle said: "Why? What was his motive? Greed. Greed for money."

Swingle told jurors, based on testimony, that Patterson and Michelle Lawrence had been talking for weeks about how they would be "on Easy Street" and living the "high life" if John Lawrence was out of the picture.

"From the time he heard about the insurance, he began plotting murder and he began planning murder," Swingle said.

Swingle said first-degree murder is warranted because deliberation is clear -- Patterson had Lawrence buy bullets, he was seen with a gun the night before the murder and he bought gas at 1 a.m. the morning of the murders to burn down the house.

'This was an execution'

Witnesses also testified that Patterson told them in the days leading up to the murder that he was about to come into some money.

"This was not a burglary gone bad," Swingle said. "This was an execution."

But the defense team tried to throw a monkey wrench into Swingle's case. They called into question the testimony of Swingle's two primary witnesses, Michelle Lawrence and Hughes, who both testified in exchange for lesser charges.

"The state's witness, Mr. Hughes, is a child molester who came here to sell dope," Steele said during his turn at closing.

Hughes had admitted he had a history of burglary and moved to Missouri from Arkansas fleeing a warrant for failure to register as a sex offender.

Steele asked the jury to consider that Hughes was the one who killed the Ormans. Steele said that Hughes had admitted to 40 burglaries.

Steele also recounted testimony from earlier in the day, when a Missouri State Highway Patrol criminologist said that blood was seized from a sock worn by Hughes the day following the murder. A DNA test showed that the blood belonged to a woman. But no blood from the victims was sent to be analyzed. Swabs were taken from Hughes, Michelle Lawrence and Patterson, and the blood belonged to none of them.

Swingle said that was irrelevant because Hughes admitted in court that he burned his clothes following the crime. Hughes said while watching for cops, he heard a loud noise, went around to the back of the house and saw Patterson standing over Derrick Orman's body with a gun.

But Steele said Patterson and Michelle Lawrence also knew when John Lawrence worked and that they had the Lawrence children on the nights he worked. They knew John Lawrence would not be home at the time the killings took place, Steele said.

"If you're going to kill John to get this money, don't you want John to be home?" Steele said.

But Swingle countered with the videotape of Patterson's interview with police, when he claimed he intended to burn John Lawrence's truck that night because he had called him the N-word. On the tape, which jurors watched Tuesday, Patterson told police he thought John Lawrence was at home that night.

Swingle said he had made the case for first-degree murder.

"If you come back with anything less, you've let him get away with murder," Swingle told the jurors just before they retired for deliberations.

As the jury deliberated, family members of the Orman family milled around the courthouse as Patterson supporters gathered on a gazebo on the courthouse lawn.

smoyers@semissourian.com

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