Facts of the Crime:
A Broward judge sentenced a Boca Raton man to death for hog-tying, beating, strangling and robbing a 72-year-old man in Oakland Park. In February 2009, a Broward County jury convicted Eric Kurt Patrick, then 46, of first-degree murder for the September 2005 slaying of Steven Schumacher. In June 2009, the same jurors voted 7-5 to recommend the death sentence. Circuit Judge Ilona Holmes imposed the death sentence, said prosecutor Shari Tate. Police said Patrick planned to rob Schumacher, an openly gay man who frequented the Cubby Hole bar in Fort Lauderdale. The 10-time convicted felon confessed to the killing, saying he beat Schumacher in the man's home because he made a pass at him. Defense attorneys had urged jurors to spare Patrick's life by detailing accounts of his "systematic, brutal, sadistic treatment" as a child. But Tate argued that Patrick's sad childhood did not outweigh the brutality of the murder. Patrick methodically hog-tied Schumacher, knocked three teeth out of his mouth, and pummeled and strangled him, Tate said. Schumacher even left to get crack cocaine and returned to smoke it, while Schumacher lay dying in his own bathtub, she said.
Patrick was sentenced to death in Broward County on October 9, 2009.
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