Barry Ferguson convicted of first-degree murder in killing of daughter

[Special2bme]

http://i359.photobucket.com/albums/oo35/Special2bme/M_IMAGE11fd101b4ff9388fad067e5f06e.jpgNEW ORLEANS - A man accused of raping and murdering his own daughter was found guilty of first-degree murder by a jury after only a few hours of deliberation Saturday.

Barry Ferguson could face the death penalty for his conviction. The sentencing phase will begin Monday. The jury will be sequestered the remainder of the weekend until that portion of the trial begins.

Following the verdict, the mother of Brandy Ferguson was in tears in the courtroom.

The verdict came following several days of graphic and disturbing testimony that centered on much of the blood from Brandy Ferguson being found on her father’s body and his clothing. There were also upsetting 911 calls that were recounted.

The defense claimed that Brandy was abducted and molested by two other men and that her father got the blood stains when he tried to help her. http://www.wwltv.com/topstories/stories/wwl041809tpferguson.e9912168.html

I hope he gets the DP.

[Wicked Doll]

Brandy Ferguson

http://i586.photobucket.com/albums/ss306/wicked_doll777/ferguson.jpg

I hope he gets the DP too, especially after reading this.

Video also at link.


The trial of a Kenner man accused of raping and killing his daughter has been moved to East Jefferson Hospital to get testimony from the defendant’s ailing mother.

Video: Watch the Story

Prosecutors, defense attorneys, Judge Lynda Van Davis and a court reporter headed to hospital to hear “essential” testimony from Audrey Ferguson, the mother of Barry Ferguson, according to the Orleans District Attorney’s Office.

A day earlier, the estranged wife of accused murderer Barry Ferguson testified before an Orleans Criminal District Court jury on Wednesday that she heard blood-curdling screams over her husband’s cell phone when she tried to contact him and his 16-year-old daughter before police found the girl’s body on Interstate 610 near Canal Boulevard.

Chris Ferguson told jurors the screams sounded like “something worse than in any horror movie.”

Ferguson said that she recognized the screaming as that of her step-daughter Brandy Ferguson.

“Then I heard moans,” she said during the emotional testimony. “The moans were like the sound when someone hits you or knocks the breath out of you.”

Ferguson told jurors that the screams and moans came at the end several attempts to contact both her husband Barry or daughter Brandy on his cell phone.

She said her husband and step-daughter originally planned to see a movie at a Jefferson Parish theater. Ferguson said she talked to her husband after theater workers refused to let them in the cinema because they were carrying soft drinks.

After repeated attempts to contact the two by cell phone again, she began to worry something was wrong. She also said she believed her husband had been drinking alcohol and wanted him to call a cab for Brandy.

But after what she described as about “20” failed telephone calls, she connected to her husband’s cell phone and heard the teen’s screams.

The jurors then listened to 911 tape recordings of Ferguson’s next call to the Kenner Police Department.

“My step daughter is on the phone and she’s with her father and screaming at the top of her lungs,” the then hysterical Ferguson told the operator. “I think something bad is happening.”

A former emergency medical technician told jurors he was the first responder on the scene when the body of Brandy Ferguson was found in City Park along I-610.

The EMT, Joseph Glorioso, said he observed the victim's dead, nude body facedown.Near the body was a man who identified himself as the girl's father, Barry Ferguson.

He told jurors Ferguson said he and his daughter had been hitchhiking and the driver forced him from the car and drove off with his daughter. He added Ferguson appeared to be intoxicated at the time.

He added Ferguson appeared to be intoxicated at the time.

Ferguson, 45, has been in prison since his arrest in 2003 and is on trial for first-degree murder.

In their opening statements, both the prosecution and defense offered up two very different scenarios for what happened on May 24, 2003.

Prosecutors said that he raped and strangled his 16-year-old daughter, Brandy Ferguson, after a night of drinking and hitchhiking.

Her body was found in the grass near the I-610 by a motorist.

Defense attorneys contend that two black men in a red car abducted his daughter when they hitched a ride with him and that Barry Ferguson later found his daughter’s body further down that road.

Prosecutors first called Loretta Gillman, Brandy Ferguson’s mother, to the stand. During her brief testimony, Gillman was often in tears when she talked about her divorce from Ferguson and the subsequent mutual decision to leave Brandy Ferguson in his care.

When asked by the prosecution about the last time she saw her daughter, she said she was “like a little toddler.”

Prosecutors then called Jessica Bazile to the stand. Bazile and her boyfriend at the time had given Barry Ferguson and his daughter a ride after they approached them at a Metairie gas station. Bazile said the father and daughter told her they were hitchhiking to Florida.

“He was drunk and touching on her, not in a father-daughter way,” Bazile said on the stand. “It did not look right. I kept asking her if anything was wrong, and she said, ‘No.’ ”

Bazile said they dropped the two off at the I-10 exit at Bonnabel and didn’t see them again.

The bulk of the testimony, though, came from Dr. Alevero Hunt, a forensic. Hunt said the teenager had been strangled to death by hand and appeared to have been raped or involved in forceful sexual contact.

However, Hunt said he was unable to recover any DNA from the sexual assault or from under her fingernails, which had been badly chewed and unable to yield any material for testing.

http://www.wwltv.com/topstories/stories/wwl041609mlferguson.dea45e3f.html

[Misskittychaos]

What a dirt bag, what he did makes him a monster but doing to his own child...there are no words.

[Kalehue]

http://blog.nola.com/news_impact/2009/04/medium_Barry_Ferguson_.jpg

The Orleans Parish jury that convicted Barry Ferguson of first-degree murder for the 2003 rape and murder of his mentally disabled teenage daughter gave him a sentence of life in prison Monday evening rather than death by lethal injection that prosecutors had demanded.

The verdict was unanimous for life and came after almost two hours of deliberation.

Ferguson, 45, didn't testify at either his trial or at Monday's sentencing hearing, where his defense team urged the jury to consider his chronic alcoholism as a mitigating factor.

Brandy Ferguson, a special education student who read at a second-grade level, dreamed of being a teacher and is remembered for a sweet, bubbly personality. Her body was found after midnight May 24, 2003, half-naked and bloody off the roadside of the eastbound lanes of Interstate 610 that cross City Park.

The father and daughter had spent the evening traveling from Kenner to New Orleans hitching rides from strangers, including one from a state trooper who found them walking on an Interstate ramp. All the while, Barry Ferguson fed his alcoholism with margaritas, beers and a daiquiri at various suburban stops.

Ferguson's most ardent defender, and the only blood relative supporting him at the trial, was his mother, Audrey Ferguson, who is hospital-bound and recovering from heart surgery at East Jefferson General Hospital.

"Barry didn't just drink to drink, " his mother said in a videotaped interview from her hospital bed on Sunday. "He drank until he couldn't drink anymore. He drank as if he was trying to blot out his whole life."

Audrey Ferguson, now in her mid-70s, said that her husband Frank Ferguson Sr. was a frightening alcoholic who beat his three boys and her. He died when Barry was a child.

In her second videotaped appearance before the jury, Audrey Ferguson said she refuses to believe her son, who lived off and on with his mother in Kenner for years through three marriages, killed Brandy.

Prosecutors Mary Glass and Kevin Guillory argued that Barry Ferguson deserves to die by lethal injection for what the law defines as a "cruel and atrocious" murder.


http://www.nola.com/news/index.ssf/2009/04/ferguson_jury_deliberating_ove.html