Heather Curtis
WMAL.com
FAIRFAX — (WMAL) It’s day two of jury deliberations in the Charles Severance murder trial. Yesterday the jury deliberated for seven hours without reaching a verdict.
They’re resuming deliberations Friday morning to decide whether Severance is guilty of killing realtor Nancy Dunning in 2003, transit planner Ron Kirby in 2013 and music teacher Ruthanne Lodato last year. All three were killed in their homes.
Friday Judge Randy Bellows denied the jury’s request for a list of every exhibit presented by the prosecution and defense but said they could request specific ones by number. He also told the jury they couldn’t get police reports related to the Lodato murder because they hadn’t been submitted into evidence. Jurors were given they markers, easel and tape they requested.
The jury’s considering a lot of evidence in this case including thousands of pages of Severance’s own writing, testimony from about 100 witnesses, a sketch drawn based on descriptions by an eyewitness who was shot in Lodato’s home by the music teacher’s killer, and surveillance video of a man following Dunning in Target the day she was murdered.
The prosecution argued Severance blamed people he called the Alexandria elite for taking his son away from him after a long custody battle. He wrote about taking revenge. They said all three victims fit into this category. Dunning was the wife of then Sheriff Jim Dunning. Kirby was a transit planner involved in an expansion of the Woodrow Wilson Bridge, a project Severance had plans for that he believed were better than the ones used. Lodato had family members who served as judges in Alexandria. The defense argued Severance didn’t know the victims and hadn’t written anything specific about any of them.
The defense said all the evidence is circumstantial and not enough to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Severance is guilty. The prosecution contended it’s not uncommon for juries to convict people of murder based on all circumstantial evidence. Besides, they said the eyewitness testimony of Janet Franco, the woman in Lodato’s home when the music teacher was killed who was also shot by the killer, is not circumstantial.
Severance faces 11 charges, including two capital murders and one first-degree murder. If he’s found guilty, he could be sentenced to life in prison. The death penalty is off the table.
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