Jury’s verdict: Death

• By STEVEN WARD
• Advocate staff writer
• Published: Apr 18, 2008 - Page: 1A - UPDATED: 12:20 a.m.

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Convicted mass  murderer Anthony Bell deserves to die by lethal injection for killing his wife and four in-laws in a May 2006 shooting spree, a jury recommended late Thursday.

Jurors deliberated for just under two hours before returning with the verdict shortly before 9 p.m.

When state District Judge Todd Hernandez read the jury’s recommendation, Bell — dressed in orange-and-white striped prison clothes for the first time in the trial — stood straight and stared in the judge’s direction.

There were no outbursts in the courtroom during the reading of the verdict, but many family members of the victims had smiles and tears on their faces when the word “death” was pronounced.

Bell, 27, was convicted a week ago on five counts of first-degree murder and a count of attempted first-degree murder in the shooting spree that began at the Ministry of Jesus Christ Church, where he killed four in-laws, and ended at an apartment parking lot where he fatally shot his wife, Erica Bell.

The same jurors who convicted Bell recommended he be sentenced to death. Jurors had a choice of whether to recommend a sentence of death or life in prison.

“There was only one just verdict in this case and the jury had the courage to render it,” prosecutor Mark Dumaine said in an interview late Thursday after the trial.

“And we had a family patient enough to wait for it,” he said.

“I’m happy,” Jeffery Howard, son of murder victims Gloria and Leonard Howard, said after the trial. “My father taught me to believe in the system, and the system worked. Mr. Bell is going to burn now.”

Prosecutor Aaron Brooks said he felt satisfied for the victims and their families.

“This family can finally get a sense of closure,” Brooks said.

Defense attorneys Margaret Lagattuta and Greg Rome declined to comment on the verdict following the trial.

During testimony Thursday, jurors appeared to be most moved by the victim-impact statements made by family members of the murder victims.