CENTENNIAL, Colo.—Prosecutors told jurors Wednesday that a man convicted in the killings of a witness and his fiance should be sentenced to death, saying he “has forfeited his right to live.”
“What is there to deter killers from killing witnesses against them?” said prosecutor John Hower, trying to persuade jurors to sentence 23-year-old Robert Ray to death.
An Arapahoe County jury convicted Ray last month on two counts of first-degree murder for the 2005 shooting deaths of Vivian Wolfe and Javad Marshall-Fields, who was going to testify against Ray in another murder trial. The same jury will begin to deliberate his fate Thursday.
Attorneys on Wednesday delivered their closing statements during Ray’s sentencing phase.
Ray’s attorney, Mike Root, told jurors to have mercy and spare Ray’s life.
“Please be a merciful person,” Root said.
But another prosecutor, Ann Tomsic, told jurors Ray doesn’t deserve mercy.
“Don’t waste your mercy on Robert Ray,” she said.
Ray’s accomplice in the killings, Sir Mario Owens, is already on death row for the killings. Prosecutors said Ray planned and ordered the shootings and that Owens was the triggerman.
Owens and Nathan Dunlap are the only inmates on Colorado’s death row. Dunlap was convicted in 1996 of killing four people and wounding a fifth at an Aurora Chuck E. Cheese restaurant in 1993.
Dunlap and Owens are appealing.
Jurors have heard testimony for nearly a month on whether Ray deserves to die. Defense attorneys brought witnesses, including Ray’s relatives, to testify that Ray had a violent upbringing in a Chicago neighborhood, and that he had seen at least three people get killed by the time he was 7.
Ray also spoke to jurors earlier this week and asked for a life sentence.
“I take full responsibility for the part I had in this crime,” he said.
