Rutledge convicted of purposely killing officer; death penalty an option for jury
By John Futty
The Columbus Dispatch
The widow of Columbus Police Officer Steven Smith wept on the shoulder of their son Thursday as a Franklin County jury returned verdicts that made the officer’s killer eligible for the death penalty.
Lincoln S. Rutledge, 45, was convicted of purposely killing Smith during a SWAT standoff after barricading himself inside his Clintonville apartment on April 10, 2016.
The jurors will return to Common Pleas Court on Monday for a hearing at which the defense will present mitigating factors in hopes of convincing them to recommend a life sentence rather than death.
The jury deliberated for about 16 hours over three days before finding Rutledge guilty of aggravated murder in Smith’s shooting death. Jurors found that Rutledge knew he was shooting at a law-enforcement officer, was attempting to kill two or more people and that he committed the crime to escape detection or apprehension. Each of those findings, known as specifications, makes him eligible for a death sentence.
If the jury decides that death isn’t the appropriate penalty, they must recommend a sentence of life in prison without parole or life with a chance of parole after 25 or 30 years.
A Franklin County jury hasn’t recommended a death sentence since 2003.
The officer’s son, Jesse Smith, came to court from the Columbus Police Academy, where he is a member of the recruit class that will graduate as officers in July. Dressed in his recruit uniform, he sat in the second row behind the prosecution and comforted his mother, Lisa Smith, in the packed courtroom.
Officer Smith, 54, was a 27-year veteran of the police force.
Family members declined comment after the verdicts were announced by Judge Mark Serrott.
Rutledge didn’t react to the verdicts, staring straight ahead and remaining motionless, as he has throughout the trial.
The spectators included four of Smith’s fellow SWAT officers, three of whom testified at the trial.
Officer Tim O’Donnell, who was part of the standoff that night and testified about it, said after the verdict that the SWAT teams honor Smith every time they respond to a call.
“We had a barricade probably two or three days after his funeral,” O’Donnell said. “So we just picked up and went to work. That’s what Steve would have wanted and that’s what we’ve done ever since. That’s the best tribute to him, that we went back to work, and we’re still doing our job.”
The jury of seven men and five women also convicted Rutledge of two counts of attempted murder and four counts of felonious assault for other officers who were in the line of fire during the standoff; 10 gun specifications; and one count of aggravated arson for setting his estranged wife’s house on fire.
Officers were attempting to serve Rutledge with an arrest warrant on the arson charge when he barricaded himself in the apartment on West California Avenue near North High Street, setting off an all-night standoff with SWAT officers.
Rutledge’s now ex-wife testified that he exhibited increasingly erratic, threatening behavior in the weeks before the fire was set. He had walked away from an $87,000-a-year IT job at Ohio State University.
Testimony showed that he fired shots from a 9mm handgun several times during the standoff. The fatal gunfire occurred at 2:33 a.m. when a SWAT officer began using a pole to clear glass and blinds from a rear bedroom window to get a better look inside. Smith was in the turret of an armored vehicle, providing cover for the officers outside the window, when he was struck just above the left eye by a shot fired from inside the bedroom.
Key to the evidence of his purpose to kill officers was testimony that he announced he was invoking the Castle Doctrine when a SWAT team slammed open the front door of his apartment. That law allows citizens to use deadly force against an unlawful entry into their home, but not against officers with a warrant.
Rutledge announced his intention to use deadly force toward officers and reinforced it with his behavior throughout the standoff, Assistant Prosecutors Daniel Hogan and Warren Edwards told the jury in closing arguments.
Defense attorney Jefferson Liston said in his closing argument that Rutledge was shooting at the pole that was placed in the bedroom where he was holed up, not at the officers outside. He argued that a conviction for a lesser charge of murder was more appropriate than aggravated murder.
http://www.dispatch.com/news/2017062...ption-for-jury
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