Results 1 to 4 of 4

Thread: Eric Covington Sentenced to 31 Years to Life in Prison in 2010 NV Murder of Sagittarius Gomez

  1. #1
    Administrator Aaron's Avatar
    Join Date
    Nov 2015
    Location
    New Jersey, unfortunately
    Posts
    4,382

    Eric Covington Sentenced to 31 Years to Life in Prison in 2010 NV Murder of Sagittarius Gomez


    TRIAL OPENS FOR MAN ACCUSED OF STABBING ESTRANGED PREGNANT GIRLFRIEND TO DEATH

    Eric Covington stabbed his estranged girlfriend, Sagittarius Gomez, more than 120 times over the course of an hour because he did not want her to be with another man, prosecutors said Friday during opening statements of his death penalty trial.

    The 24-year-old was seven months pregnant with their child.

    “I didn’t want to see my baby around no other n-----,” Chief Deputy District Attorney Michelle Fleck said Covington told police.

    Covington went on to describe the slaying “in cold-blooded, chilling detail,” according to the prosecutor.

    Neighbors testified that they heard loud noises and screams coming from Gomez’s East Sahara Avenue apartment in the early morning hours of Nov. 6, 2010, but none called police.

    Gomez’s blood-covered body was found the next day after police, responding to a welfare check, broke open the front door of her apartment.

    Fleck told jurors that “immediately it became abundantly obvious that one person was responsible for this grisly killing” and looked toward Covington, seated at the defense table.

    Along with first-degree murder, Covington, now 33, faces one count each of manslaughter in the killing of an unborn child, burglary while in possession of a deadly weapon and robbery with a deadly weapon.

    If convicted, he faces capital punishment. The trial is expected to last through next week.

    Defense attorney Lisa Rasmussen asked jurors whether the killing reached the “requisite level of intent” that constitutes first-degree murder.

    “We submit to you that it does not,” she said, adding that prosecutors would not be able to prove burglary or robbery charges.

    Rasmussen also said the killing did not constitute “torture or mutilation.”

    George Vance Hayes, who lived nearby at the Villas at Sunrise Mountain apartment complex, told jurors he heard a woman’s “horrific, very loud scream,” and he regretted not calling authorities.

    Covington told police he went to the east valley apartment they once shared to discuss the state of their relationship. When the talk turned sour, Covington produced a knife and began to stab Gomez, 24, police said at the time.

    After he decided the knife he brought “wasn’t working,” he took a butcher knife from a kitchen drawer and continued stabbing her, according to police.

    Police later found Covington hiding at his parents’ house in the northwest valley.

    He had ditched a switchblade and his bloody clothes, the prosecutor said.

    Covington, who had lived with Gomez before the slaying, had a history of domestic violence, police said at the time.

    http://m.reviewjournal.com/crime/hom...rlfriend-death
    Don't ask questions, just consume product and then get excited for next products.

    "They will hurt you. They will hurt your grandma, these people. The root cause of this is there's no discipline in the homes, they don't go to school, you know, they live off the government, no personal accountability, and they just beat people up for no reason, and it's disgusting." - Former Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters

  2. #2
    Moderator Ryan's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2013
    Location
    Newport, United Kingdom
    Posts
    2,454
    October 17, 2016

    Death penalty trial delayed after lawyers question defendant’s mental capacity

    A judge on Monday postponed the death penalty trial for a man accused of fatally stabbing his estranged pregnant girlfriend after his lawyers raised new questions about his mental capacity.

    Prosecutors said during opening statements last week that Eric Covington stabbed 24-year-old Sagittarius Gomez more than 120 times in an hour because he did not want her to be with another man. She was seven months pregnant with their child.

    This past weekend, defense lawyers had the 33-year-old Covington, who has been jailed since the November 2010 attack, re-evaluated by a psychologist.

    Lisa Rasmussen wrote in court papers that she tried to discuss possible negotiations with Covington in the days before trial started.

    “Those issues caused defense counsel to question the ability of Mr. Covington to process the information as one would expect,” Rasmussen stated.

    Although another doctor had previously found that Covington had an IQ of 77, the psychologist who analyzed Covington this weekend found that he had an IQ of 62.

    “My provisional opinion is that Mr. Covington is a person with intellectual disability,” Washington psychologist Mark Cunningham wrote. He added that “school records and family descriptions” indicated that Covington’s “intellectual and adaptive limitations were present well before the age of 18.”

    In 2002, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that executing inmates with “mental retardation” violates the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

    Prosecutors are expected to have another doctor evaluate Covington, and the judge scheduled a hearing for Nov. 29, with jurors slated to resume hearing evidence Dec. 7.

    Covington described the killing in a statement to police, according to prosecutors.

    Neighbors testified that they heard loud noises and screams coming from Gomez’s East Sahara Avenue apartment in the early morning of Nov. 6, 2010, but none called police.

    Gomez’s bloody body was found the next day after police, responding to a welfare check, broke open her apartment’s front door.

    Besides first-degree murder, Covington faces one count each of manslaughter in the killing of an unborn child, burglary while in possession of a deadly weapon and robbery with a deadly weapon.

    Covington told police he went to the east valley apartment they once shared to discuss their relationship. When the talk soured, Covington began to stab Gomez, police said at the time.

    http://www.reviewjournal.com/crime/h...ental-capacity

  3. #3
    Administrator Moh's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2010
    Location
    Germany
    Posts
    13,014
    Lawyers raise questions about defendants’ mental capacity in death-penalty cases

    By DAVID FERRARA
    THE LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL

    A Clark County judge recently found that a man accused of fatally stabbing his pregnant girlfriend should not face the death penalty after defense lawyers raised questions about his mental capacity.

    District Judge Elizabeth Gonzalez concluded earlier this month that psychological analysis revealed that 33-year-old Eric Covington “demonstrates significant subaverage general intellectual functioning,” which started before he was 18, and that he had “significant deficits in adaptive behavior.”

    That met the three concepts the Nevada Supreme Court has determined clarify the definition of intellectual disability. In addition to determining intellectual and adaptive functioning, a judge must decide whether the mental deficiencies began at an early age.

    Covington’s case is the latest example of a judge granting a seldom-used defense in line with requirements set by the U.S. and Nevada supreme courts.

    The U.S. Supreme Court has found that executing inmates with intellectual disabilities violates the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

    In 2014, the high court wrote: “to impose the harshest of punishments on an intellectually disabled person violates his or her inherent dignity as a human being.”

    In Covington’s case, prosecutors allege that he stabbed his 24-year-old pregnant girlfriend, Sagitarius Gomez, more than 100 times because he did not want her to be with another man. Prosecutors have said they plan to appeal Gonzalez’s ruling.

    Although another doctor had previously found that Covington has an IQ of 77, a psychologist who analyzed him in October found that he has an IQ of 62.

    A psychologist for the prosecution examined him in November and found his IQ at 76.

    The judge’s decision also meant that the trial, which had been delayed in October and was scheduled to resume last week, was canceled.

    Around the same time Gonzalez made her ruling, attorneys in two other capital cases presented similar arguments, contending that defendants have intellectual disabilities that should automatically disqualify them from execution should they be convicted.

    Next month, District Judge Doug Smith is expected to consider findings from Sharon Jones-Forrester, a Las Vegas clinical neuropsychologist who determined that suspected serial killer Nathan Burkett has an IQ of 59.

    “Burkett is functioning at an extraordinary low level of intelligence,” his attorneys, Christopher Oram and Betsy Allen, wrote in court papers.

    Burkett attended segregated schools in the Deep South and received mostly D’s and F’s before dropping out as a high school sophomore in 1962, his lawyer wrote.

    His IQ was tested at 55 while he was serving time in a Mississippi prison on a manslaughter conviction in the death of his mother.

    Gonzalez is also scheduled to hear arguments next month regarding the mental capacity of Gustavo Ramos, facing the death penalty for two counts each of murder, armed robbery and sexual assault in the 1998 killing of 75-year-old Wallace Siegel and 86-year-old Helen Sabraw, who were found on back-to-back days at their assisted-living home.

    His attorneys, Ivette Maningo and Abel Yanez , filed court papers last week, saying a California psychologist determined Ramos-Martinez has an IQ between 67 and 77.

    Authorities linked Ramos-Martinez to the slayings in 2010 after he gave a DNA sample while serving time in federal prison on an illegal immigration charge.

    Raised in “extreme poverty,” Ramos-Martinez struggled in school while in Mexico and the United States, according to the documents from his lawyers.

    “His relatives thought he was ‘dumb’ because he couldn’t learn, and his siblings often had to do his homework for him,” the lawyers wrote. He had trouble following simple instructions as a child, and as an adult “he was unable to separate lemons from limes.”

    He had difficulty maintaining employment for more than a few months, never lived independently and does not know how to maintain a banking account.

    Ramos-Martinez was first deported in 1998 after pleading guilty to trying to stab his girlfriend in a drunken fight a month after the killings. His home at the time was an apartment complex less than a quarter-mile from the victims’ assisted living home.

    Prosecutors have yet to file opposition in the cases of Burkett or Ramos-Martinez. At times, both sides agree that a defendant may not be mentally fit for the death penalty.

    Late last month, 25-year-old Jerry Howard was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole after prosecutors agreed to withdraw the death penalty.

    Howard pleaded guilty to first-degree murder with a deadly weapon, first-degree kidnapping, sexual assault with a deadly weapon and robbery with a deadly weapon for a vicious attack on 54-year-old Kathy Shines while she was collecting cans in the 3300 block of South Nellis Boulevard in January 2015.

    Clark County District Attorney Steve Wolfson said he considered “a substantial likelihood” that, because of medical reports on Howard’s mental capacity, a jury would not impose capital punishment.

    http://www.reviewjournal.com/crime/c...-penalty-cases

  4. #4
    Senior Member CnCP Legend
    Join Date
    Oct 2018
    Posts
    2,243
    Edited:

    Man pleads guilty to killing pregnant girlfriend in Las Vegas


    By David Ferrara
    Las Vegas Review-Journal

    More than three years after his death penalty trial was halted, a Las Vegas man who fatally stabbed his estranged pregnant girlfriend pleaded guilty Thursday to murder and robbery.

    Eric Covington, 37, agreed to spend 31 years to life in prison.

    https://www.reviewjournal.com/crime/...vegas-1978696/
    Last edited by Helen; 03-14-2020 at 09:46 AM. Reason: added sentence and edited at top

Thread Information

Users Browsing this Thread

There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •