Jurors recommend death penalty in lawyer's death one day after defendant is convicted
A former U.S. Marine should be put to death for the murder of an Alabama lawyer, jurors recommended on Thursday.
Jurors convicted Ocie Lee Lynch of Birmingham, Alabama, on Wednesday and recommended the death penalty on Thursday in a 10-2 vote, the Daily Home reports. Lynch was convicted in the 2011 slaying of lawyer Blake Lazenby, who was fatally shot at his Sylacauga home in July 2011.
A judge will make the final decision on the death penalty in a Jan. 14 sentencing hearing.
Defense lawyers argued in mitigation that Lynch had no previous convictions for serious crimes and he had served in the U.S. Marines. Lynch’s brother testified that Lynch was a different person from the kid he knew growing up.
The Daily Home cites this argument against the death penalty by defense lawyer Jeff Salyer. “There is no excuse for what he did,” Salyer said. “He took the life of a good man … We don’t know why people do what they do, if they’re not raised right, if they are on drugs, we don’t know. … Blake was not granted a chance to live. Please give [Lynch] the chance that he didn’t.”
A key witness at trial was Lynch’s former girlfriend, who made a recording of Lynch bragging about the crime and revealing details that were little known, the story says.
Prosecutors had argued Lynch was the triggerman in a murder for hire. Trial testimony cited by the Daily Home indicated that Lazenby and his wife, Geanne Lazenby, were in a long-running divorce battle at the time of the murder, and she was in “some sort” of relationship with the man accused of hiring Lynch and a co-defendant to carry out the killing.
Geanne Lazenby has not been charged in the case.
