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1 Comment [ View ]Griffin found guilty / No closure -- just 'relief' -- for family seeking justice
By TIM GURRISTERLOGAN -- The same jury that found Glenn Howard Griffin guilty of a 1984 murder will next decide whether he lives or dies for the crime.
After a 1st District Court jury deliberated 12 hours to find Griffin guilty of aggravated murder in the May 26, 1984, stabbing and bludgeoning of Bradley Newell Perry, Griffin's public defenders said they would opt for the jury to preside over next week's sentencing hearing.
Griffin has the option of having the judge in the case decide sentencing, with the consent of the judge and prosecutors.
But his attorneys Friday said it will be up to the jury of seven men and five women, with four female alternates.
"I was happy with the jury we empaneled, and I still am. The verdict was our fault," said lead defense counsel Randy Richards.
The sentencing phase begins Tuesday and could run through the week. The jury has the option of death by lethal injection, life in prison, or life with possible parole.
Currently, 10 inmates are on Utah's death row, none with scheduled execution dates as appeals progress, said Angie Welling, state corrections spokeswoman.
The 22-year-old Perry was found bound, stabbed and battered in a locked storage room in the early morning hours at the Texaco station -- now a Sinclair -- where he worked at Brigham City's south end.
First District Judge Ben Hadfield moved the case to Logan because of the amount of pretrial publicity.
DNA testing linked Griffin to blood found on a dollar bill, which police say Griffin gave as change to two men while pretending to be an attendant at a self-serve gas pump just after the killing.
Police say the altercation began as an argument over correct change.
"We're feeling relief. I don't know what else," Perry's mother, Claudia, said after the verdict came in shortly after noon Friday.
She and Griffin's adoptive mother, Arlene Pyle, who raised Griffin in Logan, have become friends over the course of more than three years of hearings since Griffin's 2005 arrest.
"I just feel so bad for her," Perry said of Pyle. "I love the lady, but there was not a thing in the world I could have said to her today."
She said the family does not favor any particular sentence for Griffin.
"It's whatever the law gives -- that's the way it should be."
She dismissed any thoughts of closure with Griffin's conviction.
"There would never really be what you would call closure, because we can never get Brad back. How can there be closure? I don't see Brad anywhere."
The family has found waiting more than three years for a verdict and sentencing more difficult than waiting 21 years for an arrest, she said.
"Once you know there's a possibility, it's much harder. You learn to live with the other, but this is a new path."
Arlene Pyle was almost too tearful to speak following the verdict, saying only that Richards had early on made the family aware of the automatic appeal that would follow a guilty verdict.
Twenty to 30 Perry family members and friends attended the trial throughout, along with 10 to 20 of Griffin's family members and friends.
The appeal is automatic by statute, and Griffin's defense team noted after the verdict they easily have five or six issues from the trial they can explore as appeal grounds.
They wouldn't comment further because Hadfield has long had a gag order in effect that limits the amount of comment on the case officials can make to the media.
Prosecutors were reluctant to comment at all after the verdict, with Box Elder County Attorney Steve Hadfield saying, "We have to be careful, because the trial is not over."
Deputy Box Elder County Attorney Brad Smith, who has carried the case since its inception in 2005, before Hadfield took office in 2007, backed that sentiment, saying, "The defendant's trial rights are at their height right now, and I don't want to do anything to jeopardize that."
Steve Hadfield is a distant relative of the judge but has long been deemed free of any conflict of interest by the Utah State Bar since his days as a Brigham City prosecutor.
"In my heart of hearts, I think he's innocent," Richards said of Griffin in speaking to reporters shortly after the verdict was read. "But I accept where we're at."
As to what the jury seized on in the complicated three-week trial, which turned on DNA and other forensic issues, Richards said, "I've given up trying to second-guess juries. We'll move on. It's all we can do."
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This is one crime for which we have the death penality, I death by fireing squad were stipp permissible I would volinteer to be a oneman squad, furnish my own weapon and ammunition. I can assure you the guilty will suffer less than the victum
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