Los Angeles News

LOS ANGELES A prosecutor urged jurors Monday to recommend a death sentence for a convicted double-murderer he called a "predator," while a defense attorney urged a life prison term, saying his client grew up in a "toxic environment."

Deputy District Attorney Michael Blake told the Los Angeles Superior Court jury that the appropriate term for Steven Anthony Jones is death in light of his crimes and his lengthy criminal record. He called the other option -- life in prison without the possibility of parole -- "the minimum sentence."

"He is a true predator," the prosecutor told jurors in his closing argument, saying Jones was "lurking around like a crocodile" before confronting one of the murder victims.

One of Jones' attorneys, Robert Schwartz, acknowledged that his client had "built up a resume of violence which is startling," but urged jurors to consider the conditions under which his now-41-year-old client was raised.

Jones' father beat him, his siblings and his mother, his attorney said.

"Unfortunately, Steven Jones, and this doesn't excuse anything he's done, Steven Jones was dealt a losing hand. He grew up in a toxic environment," his attorney told the jury, calling the abuse Jones suffered at the hands of his father "cruel and sadistic."

"The violent man that Thomas Jones Sr. was is the person (his son) became," Schwartz said. "What Steven Jones lived through as a child and what he became are inseparable."

The same jury convicted Jones on May 28 of first-degree murder in the November 2004 shooting death of Neil Robert Hacker in Quartz Hill and the December 2004 beating death of Sharon Ann Willis in a Lancaster motel room.

Jurors found true the special circumstance allegations of multiple murders, murder during the commission of a robbery, murder while lying in wait and murder involving the infliction of torture, which make him eligible for a death sentence.

Jones was also convicted of trying to kill two other men on Dec. 12, 2004, at a Lancaster home where he had rented a room; sexually assaulting a fellow inmate in concert with another prisoner at the Men's Central Jail on June 10, 2005; battering a deputy trying to extract him from his cell following that attack; and torturing and trying to kill another inmate on Dec. 20, 2005.

Jones' attorney told jurors that a neuropsychologist who tested the defendant determined that he has a brain deficit affecting his ability to control his behavior.

But he said jurors didn't need an expert to figure that out. He noted that Jones had insulted the jury while the case was pending, referring to an incident a week earlier in which the defendant directed an expletive at the panel.

"You know there's something wrong with him," Schwartz said, adding that Jones' conviction for the two murders ensure that he is "never going home" and "never walking out the gates of any prison."

The prosecutor disputed the defense's claim that Jones has a brain dysfunction.

"I submit to you these are completely controlled, executed, thought-out crimes with no brain dysfunction going on here," Blake told jurors.

"What you have here is a predatory career criminal," the prosecutor said, noting that Jones was in his 30s, "not some 17 or 18-year-old kid," at the time of the killings.

"Give him the death penalty because he's earned it," the deputy district attorney told the panel.

Judge Kathleen Kennedy handed jurors the case this afternoon, and the panelists are due back in court Tuesday morning to resume their discussions on what sentence to recommend.

(© 2008 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Wire services contributed to this report.)