A six-person jury has returned guilty verdicts in the murder trial for Henry Segura. Segura is accused of killing his ex-girlfriend Brandi Peters, and her three children, including the couple's three-year-old son.
It took the jury about four hours to issue its verdicts.
The state's case against Segura has centered on the more than $20,000 he owed in back child support to Peters. Prosecutors claim those unpaid bills prevented Segura from obtaining a Visa to work oversees.
Segura’s attorney tried to shoot down that argument, saying that his client had filed paperwork with the court system to see if the three-year-old child was his.
The jury was shown graphic photos of a bloody crime scene, and state witnesses testified that Brandi Peters struggled to fend off her attacker, noting most of her injuries were defensive. In dispute during the trial was whether DNA evidence could conclusively rule Segura out. A state DNA expert testified that a lack of conclusive evidence for Segura at the crime scene did not rule him out as a suspect in the murders.
At one point in the case, Segura's defense pointed to the jailhouse testimony of another man who claimed he killed Peters over drug debts. But the state managed to dismiss that theory, and Peters' sister said she was not a drug dealer.
Jurors will decide sometime this week whether the 41-year-old should be sentenced to death or serve life behind bars. He's been in jail for nine years. This marks Segura's second trial for the murders. The first in 2017 ended in a mistrial when jurors couldn't reach a unanimous decision.
