Prosecutors won't seek death penalty in shooting of Mobile police officer

[JacobG18]

MOBILE, Ala. -- The death penalty has been pulled from consideration in the capital murder case against a man accused of killing a Mobile police officer last year, prosecutors announced in court on Wednesday.

Richard Joseph Hollingsworth, 19, now faces life in prison without parole if convicted of capital murder in the June 2009 shooting death of Brandon Sigler, a Mobile police officer.

Sigler, 26, also worked as a security officer at Tyler Ridge Apartments in west Mobile. Authorities say Hollingsworth shot the officer as he investigated an argument in the complex’s parking lot.

The prosecution withdrew the death penalty during a hearing in Circuit Judge John Lockett’s courtroom on Wednesday. The judge also granted the prosecution’s request to delay the trial until Jan. 24. It had been set to go before a jury next month.

Mobile County Assistant District Attorney Jo Beth Murphree, after the hearing, said Sigler’s family supported taking the death penalty off the table. Murphree said the prosecution considered various factors in the case, although she declined to go into any detail.

District Attorney John Tyson Jr. also refused to discuss that decision. He said his office does not want to release details of evidence before the trial.

A spokesman for the Mobile Police Department declined to comment Wednesday.
After the hearing, defense attorney Jeff Deen said while the shooting was a tragedy, it didn’t involve the kind of egregious behavior that would make it rise to the level of the death penalty.

“The defendant is not that bad a kid,” Deen said.

In July, Hollingsworth was sentenced to 10 years in prison after pleading guilty in federal court to possession of a stolen firearm. Police said the weapon involved in the shooting, a Ruger .380-caliber semiautomatic handgun, had been reported stolen.

In that case, the defense argued that Hollingsworth was acting in self-defense, and he didn’t know Sigler — who was dressed in civilian clothes — was an officer.
Hollingsworth, who was then 18, went to the apartment complex after he was told his girlfriend was fighting with another woman, the defense said. The teen saw Sigler approaching him, according to the defense, and he heard someone say the man had a gun.

Under Alabama law, a person can be charged with capital murder for killing an on-duty law enforcement officer, regardless of whether the defendant knew, or should have known, the victim was an officer.

Tyson said when Sigler responded to the conflict that night, he was acting as an on-duty officer.

Sigler, a Murphy High School graduate, was engaged to be married. He joined the Mobile Police Department in 2007.

In state court, Hollingsworth also faces charges of second-degree possession of marijuana, third-degree receiving stolen property, and possession of an altered firearm. The judge ruled Wednesday that those cases will be tried separate from the capital murder case


http://blog.al.com/live/2010/11/pros...o_seek_de.html

[Krugerrand]

The elite class gets elite treatment.

[TonySutton]

He would not be an "on duty" law enforcement officer if he was working a second job as a security officer, would he? Why is that even in the article?

[Krugerrand]

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