Bobby Cutts Murder Trial: Deliberations

After an excruciatingly long set of jury instructions, the jury was given the case yesterday at approximately 3 pm. Regarding the instructions, Judge Brown commented the day before that they threw everything in there including the kitchen sink. It took three hours for the instructions to be read into the record and Brown had to give the entire courtroom a break to stand and stretch their legs half way through the reading. The jury deliberated until 6 pm, which they will do each day until a verdict is reached. We are hoping they will reach one today.

Very little information has been released about the individual jurors. However, the Canton Repository has a synopsis of all the players in the case. From the Repository, donchais and I found this bit of information very interesting about Judge Brown:

Charles E. Brown Jr. has been a Stark County Common Pleas judge for seven years, gaining a reputation for his methodical approach to cases and formal courtroom demeanor.

Brown was a military prosecutor while in the U.S. Marine Corps. He also was the longtime chief of the Stark County Republican Party and ran a successful civil practice before being appointed a judge in 2001.

In retrospect, Brown does have a military demeanor about him and he ran his courtroom like a very tight ship. I personally can't get over the fact that the closing arguments were only one hour each. donchais has been searching all over the net and hasn't been able to find anything in the media that explains this. All we can come up with is our own speculation that Brown reviewed the case and felt it was so "cut" and dried that he could impose the one hour limit. Are there any Ohio attorneys out there who have been before Judge Brown and can tell us if this is how he consistently runs his courtroom? I know donchais was quite impressed with how efficiently this trial was run.

So what did you think of Bobby Cutts's testimony? Was he truthful on the stand? Do you think that was an accurate description of the events that unfolded on the morning of June 14th? WKYC had a body language expert review Cutts's testimony and give their opinion on whether Cutts was truthful or not.

One of our readers from Decatur, Georgia, was wondering about three murder charges when there were only two victims. Cutts was charged with three counts of aggravated murder because of the allegation that he killed two people during a burglary and because one of them was under thirteen - his unborn daughter. That's a kind of quirky law they have in Ohio.

Anyone have any guesses as to how long this jury will be out?

CNN.Crime