Ohio teen faces life after Craigslist conviction

Bro­gan Raf­ferty looks on in the court­room of Judge Lynn S. Calla­han in the Sum­mit County Cour­t­house on Tues­day in Akron after a jury reached a guilty ver­dict on all accounts in the Craigslist mur­der trial. (For the Asso­ci­ated Press | Phil Masturzo)

ANDREW WELSH-HUGGINS

AP Legal Affairs Writer

AKRON — An Ohio teen faces life in prison with no chance of parole for his role in killing and rob­bing three men and try­ing to kill a fourth in a deadly Craigslist rob­bery scheme.

Pros­e­cu­tors in the weeks-long trial painted 17-year-old Bro­gan Raf­ferty as a quick stu­dent of vio­lence and a will­ing par­tic­i­pant in three killings, while the defense argued he was act­ing under the duress of his alleged accom­plice, a self-styled chap­lain depicted as a mentor.

Raf­ferty was found guilty Tues­day on the fourth day of jury delib­er­a­tions in an Akron court.

Author­i­ties say Raf­ferty, of Stow, helped Richard Beasley, of Akron, lure four vic­tims at sep­a­rate times with bogus Craigslist job offers to a nonex­is­tent cat­tle farm in rural Noble County in south­east Ohio; they say the motive was rob­bery. Author­i­ties say Beasley shot and killed three of the men; the fourth vic­tim was shot in the arm and survived.

Raf­ferty stood with his hands clasped behind his back and showed no emo­tion as the ver­dicts were read. His mother leaned over and cried softly.

Led from the court­room, Raf­ferty shook his head and said, “Noth­ing to say.” He didn’t respond to reporters’ ques­tions about the verdict.

Pros­e­cu­tors and the defense, who are under a gag order, didn’t com­ment after­ward. The father of vic­tim Tim­o­thy Kern flashed a “thumbs up” after the ver­dicts were read but declined to com­ment when he left the courtroom.

Jury fore­woman Dana Nash and other jurors said it was a dif­fi­cult deci­sion because of the boy’s age, call­ing him “a child” on a cou­ple of occasions.

Jurors said they worked on the 25 charges against Raf­ferty one by one, with the most dif­fi­cult one involv­ing evi­dence sur­round­ing the death of the first vic­tim, Ralph Geiger. Raf­ferty was acquit­ted of a sin­gle iden­tity theft charge involv­ing Geiger.

Jurors debated each charge and often reviewed their own notes and evi­dence pre­sented at trial, includ­ing audio inter­views Raf­ferty gave investigators.

Nash said they were skep­ti­cal of some of Rafferty’s tes­ti­mony, say­ing they felt as if he con­tra­dicted him­self at points, as well as in his inter­views with investigators.

“We were try­ing to be fair, and we were fair,” Nash said after­ward. “We lis­tened to every­thing, we observed every­thing, and we feel we made the right decision.”

Raf­ferty had tes­ti­fied that he didn’t want to be a part of such vio­lence and said he went along with the plan only because he feared for his life.

Raf­ferty was tried as an adult but faces a max­i­mum poten­tial sen­tence of life in prison because he is a juve­nile. His sen­tenc­ing is set for Nov. 5.

Beasley, 53, has pleaded not guilty and could face the death penalty if con­victed at his sep­a­rate trial.

The man who sur­vived, 49-year-old Scott Davis of South Car­olina, had tes­ti­fied as the prosecution’s star wit­ness, iden­ti­fy­ing Raf­ferty as Beasley’s accom­plice and telling a har­row­ing story of survival.

Dur­ing Rafferty’s trial, defense attor­ney John Alexan­der painted Beasley as the mas­ter­mind and said that the first killing came with­out warn­ing for Raf­ferty, who “had no idea any of this was going on.”

After the first killing, Alexan­der said that Beasley warned Raf­ferty to keep quiet and coop­er­ate by remind­ing him that he knew where his mother and sis­ter lived.

Pros­e­cu­tor Emily Pelphrey told jurors that Raf­ferty chose to par­tic­i­pate in the killings, say­ing he was a “stu­dent of vio­lent crime.”

“He made the choices he wanted to make,” she said.

Pros­e­cu­tors also showed jurors pho­tographs of a suit­case filled with weapons found in Rafferty’s bed­room, includ­ing a sawed-off shot­gun, a .22-caliber pis­tol, two knives and ammu­ni­tion. None of the weapons was con­clu­sively linked to any of the three killings.

Jurors also were shown pho­tos of the graves of the three men killed in the plot and said they were just try­ing to improve their lives and find work.

The three men were Geiger, 56, of Akron; David Pauley, 51, of Nor­folk, Va.; and Kern, 47, of Mas­sil­lon. Author­i­ties say they were tar­geted because they were older, sin­gle, out-of-work men with back­grounds that made it unlikely their dis­ap­pear­ances would be noticed right away.

Posted by AP News on Oct 31 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.