beginning to end. and it was. even though polls showed three out of four people in wichita already believe the brothers to be guilty, the court denied a defense request for a change of venue as well as a request to have the brothers tried separately. jonathan carr was defended by a group of topeka lawyers who specialize in death penalty cases. from the outset, the defense wanted the jury to look past the mountain of evidence presented by the prosecution. my role today in this brief opening remark is to let you, the jury know, how jonathan carr is innocent of many of these charges. combined the brothers faced 113 criminal charges ranging from cruelty to animals to sexual assault to multiple counts of murder. crimes that carried the death penalty. because some counts may be proven against one defendant does not mean that all counts will be proven beyond a reasonable doubt against both
defendants. and it became clear that the defense strategy was to point the finger at the other brother. jonathan carr s lawyer argued that neither andy schreiber, the carjack victim or ann walenta who survived long enough to talk to police, identified him as the second assailant and no physical evidence connected him to either crime. the only evidence connecting jonathan carr is the simple fact that he is the brother of the co-defendant reginald carr. only guilt by association. jonathan carr s lawyers called no witnesses. their only evidence, an unused train ticket to cleveland, ohio, good for the night of the murders. he was actually supposed to leave very early during the morning hours of december 15th, 2000. he was supposed to board an amtrak train out of newton,
yes. did jason say anything at that time? no. it was both a terrifying and poignant moment. the awful way she learned that jason was planning to propose. h.g. said the brothers took the ring that was supposed to be hers and then demanded money. none of us had any cash on us. they asked who had atm cards. we had all kind of raised our hands as we were laying down. and so, according to h.g., reginald carr forced them to drive him to atms to withdraw money, one at a time. they were wearing next to nothing. i asked him if he was going to shoot us. he said no. and i think i said, do you promise? and he said, yeah, i m not going to shoot you. did that convince you? it did. i went back and as i got in the closet, brad and jason and aaron were still in there. and i said, i think we re going to be okay. as the night wore on, h.g. said she was raped by both jonathan and reginald carr and at one point she said she saw jonathan carr raping her friend heather.
november 2002, the verdicts in the murder trials of reginald and jonathan carr are in. guilty of the capital murder. guilty of the capital murder. both brothers had been found guilty on five counts of murder. for six long weeks, jurors had wrestled with this case with evidence they said they found very upsetting. but the most difficult decisions were yet to come. should the carr brothers be sentenced to death? the prosecution had produced a mountain of evidence to convict the carr brothers. now it believed the case had already been made for the death penalty. the law is that in the state of kansas, if you commit a capital offense and if the aggravating factors outweigh the mitigating factors, then the
he had blood coming out of one of his eyes. and then i went over to brad to see if he was still alive. and at that point, after looking at aaron and heather, i decided that i needed to go and to get help. wearing nothing, not even shoes, h.g. ran more than a mile through the snowy fields and across a highway, determined that her attackers would not escape. it was the beginning of a two-year odyssey that brought her and the carr brothers face to face in this wichita courtroom. what do you think it is or it was about her that made her act that way under those conditions? she just had the sheer will to survive. she wanted to let other people know what they had done to her friends. i mean it was this incredible