Travis County prosecutors won't make plea affords to the three males charged within the slaying of Austin jeweler Ted Shaughnessy final 12 months.
After reviewing proof towards Shaughnessy's son, Nicolas, and two different males charged within the case, District Legal professional Margaret Moore stated her workplace won't negotiate with the attorneys representing the defendants and plan to current the circumstances at trial.
No trial dates have been set, and it is unlikely the circumstances can be tried this 12 months.
"We now have no intention of reaching a deal," Moore stated Tuesday. "We do intend to attempt them for capital homicide."
The choice by Moore's workplace to not prolong a plea deal is comparatively unusual and is an motion reserved for heinous killings or circumstances through which prosecutors consider the proof factors squarely to a conviction.
Moore additionally stated her workplace won't search the dying penalty for any of the lads. As an alternative, prosecutors will pursue life sentences with out parole, the opposite choice out there to prosecutors in capital homicide circumstances.
"We're happy to listen to the information that the state won't be looking for the dying penalty," Shaughnessy's lawyer Rick Flores stated. "We're lucky to have an even-handed district legal professional who took the time to evaluate the case earlier than making this resolution."
The Travis County DA's workplace hardly ever seeks the dying penalty and final succeeded within the 2012 deadly taking pictures of Austin police officer Jaime Padron. The person who killed Padron, Brandon Daniel, was convicted of capital homicide two years later and is on dying row.
The proof secured by Travis County sheriff's detectives, based on courtroom information, embody cellphone information, GPS coordinates and witness interviews that element a plan authorities stated was hatched by Nicolas Shaughnessy to kill his mother and father to gather their life insurance coverage insurance policies and free himself of monetary hassle.
To hold out the scheme, authorities say, he scoured the Faculty Station space for help earlier than getting commitments from two males: Johnny Leon III and Arieon Smith.
Detectives say telephone information present Leon and Smith have been each in Austin on March 2, 2018, when Ted Shaughnessy was fatally shot by an intruder at his house in southwestern Travis County. The lads's plan, detectives say, was to additionally kill Shaughnessy's spouse, however she discovered cowl in a closet and known as 911.
Detectives say Nicolas Shaughnessy, an solely youngster whom the couple adopted from Russia, needed his mother and father useless to gather as much as $eight million in life insurance coverage.
Courtroom information present Leon was promised $10,000 to commit the killings, and Smith at the least $5,000.
A fourth suspect, Nicolas Shaughnessy's spouse, Jaclyn Edison, is charged with solicitation to commit capital homicide, however prosecutors haven't introduced her case to the grand jury for indictment as a result of she is cooperating within the investigation.
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