DALTON, Georgia (AP) -- Jurors spared the life Tuesday of a former 911 dispatcher convicted of poisoning her boyfriend with antifreeze, the same way she had killed her husband six years earlier.
Lynn Turner could have faced the death penalty for the 2001 murder of Randy Thompson, a Forsyth County firefighter and father of Turner's two children. Instead, the jury sentenced her to life in prison without parole.
She was already serving a life term following her 2004 conviction in the antifreeze death of her police officer husband Glenn Turner in 1995.
Lynn Turner maintained her innocence in both cases and did not testify at trial or during her sentencing hearing Monday.
Prosecutors said she was motivated by greed for the victims' life insurance money.
Tests on the victims' bodies showed they were poisoned with ethylene glycol, a sweet, odorless chemical in antifreeze. During the 2004 trial, prosecutors suggested it could have been placed in foods such as Jell-O.
The jury deliberated for about five hours before reaching a sentencing decision Tuesday -- about the same amount of time it took them to find Turner guilty on Saturday of malice murder in Thompson's death.
Afterward, members of Thompson's family said justice was done.
Defense attorney Vic Reynolds said Turner was grateful that the jury didn't sentence her to death.
"The realization will now sink in that she's spending the rest of her life in prison in this state," Reynolds said. "She's trying to come to grips with that, but she's very thankful that the jury chose the life option over the death option."
The jury's sentence is final. In Georgia, in a case where the state seeks the death penalty, the jury issues the sentence.
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If you ask me she didn't get what she deserved. She killed two people and what did she get she got life in prison without parole. Sure thats good but not good enough. The whole point of the death penalty is to use it. Why does this country have the death penalty if they aren't going to use it on the people who deserve it.
A lot of people disagree with me because they feel that life in prison without parole is good enough. If it is good enough then why did someone ever concieve the idea of the death penalty to begin with. I feel that if we have it we should use it and if we don't use then we shouldn't have it.
I realize that the death penalty is being used around the US just not in every murder trial. Life in prison is a harsh punishment but it just seems to me that using the death penalty is more of a deterrent to crimes. I say lets use the death penalty more often.
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If it is good enough then why did someone ever concieve the idea of the death penalty to begin with.
Times have changed. Back in the day, people would get hung simply because a mob wanted them hung; it was the death penalty, but it sure wasn't justice.
it just seems to me that using the death penalty is more of a deterrent to crimes.
It's been proven not to be an effective deterrent, because the kind of people likely to get the death penalty aren't going to be deterred by it. If we threatened death for accounting fraud, it might work, but for violent crimes...they don't care.
I say lets use the death penalty more often.
Are you familiar with Texas, which has executed huge numbers of criminals, including a mentally retarded person? Recently, a change in the DAs office in Dallas has caused a lot of inmates cases to be reviewed; twelve inmates so far have been released from prison because DNA evidence not introduced at their trials exonerated them. That's 12 innocent men who would have languished in jail; imagine if they had been executed and then found innocent. The Innocence Project is largely responsible for many of these mens release and exoneration.
The death penalty's rarely a good idea.
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I am a criminal justice major, I strongly favor the death penalty. However, there is an EXTREMELY fine line that the jury has to consider when sentencing someone to death. First of all does the crime match the punishment? In this case it may, however, she was motivated by greed for the life insurance policies right? Well that's not a good enough reason to give her the death penalty I'm sorry. Someone that selfish will be better off in prison for the rest of her life, just imagine waking up every single day in a concrete cell the size of a small storage unit. Could you do that everyday of your life and not wish that you were dead? I couldn't. In this case, the death penalty is just an easy way out for this woman. She's going to wake up every single day for the rest of her natural life and regret that she didn't get away with murder. She's going to think about her children that she gets to visit across a glass pane (if at all) everyday, and the money that she didn't get and didn't get to spend, and not only that but she may just have enough remorse to actually regret killing people that loved her. To me that's a better punishment then the death penalty in the long run. We're supposed to be punishing her, not giving her the easy way out.
Interesting perspective. Speaking as pre-law-major to CJ-major, why exactly do you favor the death penalty?
I agree that life in prison will certainly be an appropriate punishment for this woman.
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I guess because in some cases like for example Jeffrey Dahmer and Ted Bundy they have no remorse and they don't feel guilty for what they did. It was all a game to them, there's no fixing that, and I don't really see the point in paying my tax dollars to support someone as sick as that, but on the other hand if we never gave them the death penalty and didn't execute Ted Bundy (Jeffrey Dahmer was murdered in prison) we could've used him to study his brain. Which I don't know if that would've really been effective because he never ever admitted to those crimes even after he was sentenced.
I guess it also relates back to Hamurabi's Code (I have no idea how to spell that), an eye for eye is sometimes the best way to go, and even though it doesn't instill fear in some parts of the population, like Texas for example, it still is a crime deterrent and we don't execute as many people as the population thinks that we do. Or maybe we do and I'm blind to it.
we don't execute as many people as the population thinks that we do. Or maybe we do and I'm blind to it.
You don't execute "a lot" of people, relative to your population. But compared to other states, Texas executes a lot of people, and they do it for shaky and often sort of sketchy reasons. Having spoken with some Public Defenders down in Texas, it seems to me that the Texas criminal justice system, especially in and around Dallas county, is really not good.
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That is a very interesting perspective on the subject. You have made me think and I have to say I agree with you. The punishment you suggested would be much worse than the death penalty.
...it makes no sense.
"Killing people is BAD, therefore we're going to kill you!"
"You don't have the right to decide to kill someone, but we have the right to decide to kill you."
Wtf? Explain how that is logical.
What is the right punishment for a murderer then? If someone very close to you was murdered would you want their killer to be put to death?
Certainly I would... out of a want for revenge.
But who am I (or anyone) to decide that osmeone deserves to die? Or are people only allowed to murder when it's LEGALLY SANCTIONED?
I would not.