Treatment Abuse, Behavior Modification, Thought Reform > World Wide Association of Specialty Programs and Schools (WWASPS)

Trial for a Paradise Cove survivor starts.

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Ursus:
Video news coverage, including some court room scenes, can be seen at the link.

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CBS4.com
Jul 7, 2010 6:10 pm US/Eastern

Trial Underway For Man Accused In Murder Plot

Reporting: Gary Nelson

MIAMI (CBS4) ? It was all about money, prosecutors say. A murderous plot that left a Coral Gables woman dead, her husband - a prominent attorney - maimed and blinded, and their son charged with being behind it.

Opening statements began in Miami-Dade Circuit Court Wednesday in the murder and attempted murder trial of Christopher Sutton. The 31-year-old "son of privilege" is accused of plotting the murders of his parents out of greed and payback for his strict upbringing.

The trigger-man in the August, 2004 murder and mayhem in a Coral Gables mansion has previously plead guilty and will testify in this trial against the son. Garrett Kopp will tell jurors that he pumped multiple bullets into attorney John Sutton and Sutton's wife Susan as they slept in their beds, after being hired to do the deed by the couple's son.

In opening statements, prosecutor Carin Kahgan told a twelve member jury that the victims were shot multiple times by Kopp, who pumped slugs into them from a 9 millimeter semi-automatic pistol at their home on Orduna Drive in the Gables.

Susan Sutton, hit in the head, chest and abdomen, bled to death in her bed. Her husband, despite multiple wounds that left him blinded in both eyes, survived and called 911.

After Garrett Kopp was arrested, a gun he had proved to be the weapon used in the Sutton shootings. Kopp told police that Christopher Sutton enlisted him to kill his parents because he wanted to inherit their wealth and was angry that they had sent him to an expensive and demanding reform school as a teenager. Kopp is serving 30 years in a deal that includes his testifying for the state.

Prosecutors say Christopher Sutton left a sliding door open to allow Kopp to get into the house the night of the shootings, and went out with his girlfriend to eat and catch a movie.

Sutton offered police an alibi even before being asked for one, prosecutors say.

"Without being asked a question, the defendant said he went to dinner, saw a movie, and even offered to show the detective the tickets, even before she asked him where he was," prosecutor Kahgan told jurors.

The defense will argue that there is no hard evidence to connect Christopher Sutton to the crime.

"There is no forensic evidence that links Chris Sutton to these crimes. No DNA, no ballistics, no fingerprints, nothing," said defense attorney Bruce Fleisher.

Fleisher told jurors that the triggerman, Kopp, "invented" Sutton's alleged part in the murder and attempted murder in order to deflect blame from himself and cut a deal with the state.

The defense attorney said Kopp, who had known the Sutton family since he was a teenager, was familiar with the victims' home and had motive to try to rob them.

"He was in a drugged haze," Fleisher told jurors. "He needed drugs, he needed drugs to use, he needed drugs to sell, he needed money, and he knew where to find it."

The defense will try to show that Kopp acted alone in what was going to be a robbery, but was botched when the victims awoke and surprised him.

Prosecutors, though, say they will present witnesses who heard Christopher Sutton wish his parents dead. A co-worker where Sutton worked at a plumbing company will testify that Sutton once asked him if he knew where he could hire someone to kill his parents.

The first witness to take the stand was 911 operator Steve Ellinport, who took the call for help from John Sutton, who was bleeding profusely from his wounds, and blinded.

"Somebody came in a shot me," Sutton can be heard saying in the 911 call. "They shot me in the head."

When the dispatcher asked Sutton who did it, he replied, "I don't know. I can't see."

The trial is expected to last about three weeks before Circuit Judge Stanford Blake.


© MMX, CBS Broadcasting Inc.

Secret Dwarf Hooker:
guilty

Ursus:
Comments left for the above article, "Trial Underway For Man Accused In Murder Plot" (by Gary Nelson; Jul 7, 2010; CBS4.com):


By captainmidnight posted Wed Jul 07 2010 08:18:11
Let those amongst us who have never had their parents murdered cast the first stone.

© MMX, CBS Broadcasting Inc.

Anne Bonney:
Edited to remove the article so that it can be posted in the proper chronological order by Ursus shortly.

Ursus:
UPI.com · U.S. News
Trial: 'Parents deserved to pay' by death
Published: July 8, 2010 at 1:36 PM

MIAMI, July 8 (UPI) -- A black-sheep son asked a friend to kill his rich parents as payback for sending him to a boarding school, a prosecutor argued in a Florida murder trial.

Christopher Sutton, 31, accused of plotting to murder his father and mother in their luxury Coral Gables, Fla., home, allegedly seethed for years, enraged his parents shipped him off to an abusive boarding school in Western Samoa in the South Pacific, prosecutor Carin Kahgan told Miami-Dade Circuit Court jurors.

Standing to inherit his father's wealth, Sutton masterminded a plan that left his mother dead and his father blind, Kahgan alleged.

He is charged with first-degree murder and attempted murder and faces life in prison.

Sutton complained incessantly to his girlfriend "how his parents had taken two years of his life, how his parents deserved to pay, how he could find someone to kill his parents," Kahgan alleged.

He expressed his vengeance "like a broken record, on and on and over and over," The Miami Herald quoted Kahgan as saying in opening arguments.

Defense attorney Bruce Fleisher said in his opening statement that Sutton's friend Garrett Kopp was solely responsible for the Aug. 22, 2004, shootings and that Kopp sought to shift the blame to Sutton to avoid a harsh sentence.

Kopp, 26, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to 30 years in prison. Kopp is expected to testify against Sutton, the Herald said.

Fleisher described the break-in of the Sutton house before the shootings as Kopp acting in a drug-influenced stupor, looking for cash and narcotics.

"He needed drugs to use, needed drugs to sell, and he needed money," the Herald quoted Fleisher as saying.


© 2010 United Press International, Inc.

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