A Clayton County jury found Jonathan Bun guilty of murder Friday in the killing of a sheriff's deputy last summer.
Of 18 charges, the jury found Bun guilty of 14 counts including malice murder, felony murder, aggravated assault of a peace officer, aggravated assault and possession of a firearm during the commission of a crime.
The family of slain Clayton Sheriff's Deputy Richard "Rick" Daly released a collective sigh when the jury foreman read the first verdict of "guilty, and the deputy's adult children Toby Daly and Amber Wright clutched their mother Cheryl Daly's hand.
"Words don't explain what this feels like," said Toby Daly, a deputy with the Henry County Sheriff's Office. "This will never make us whole, but there is a heavy weight lifted off our shoulders."
Clayton County Sheriff Kem Kimbrough said he hoped the verdicts would help the Daly family and the law enforcement community take another step toward healing.
"This is a message that we're not going to tolerate" violence against law enforcement, he said. Offenders who attack police officers "will be brought to justice, and the justice system will prevail."
Clayton Chief Assistant District Attorney Erman Tanjuatco, who was part of the prosecution team, said his office made the case a priority, and he was glad it could get a guilty verdict in just over nine months. Daly was killed attempting to serve an arrest warrant on Bun last July 20.
Tanjuatco referred to the jury when he said Clayton County citizens played a major part in winning the verdict.
"It's important that this shows that the community values the law enforcement officers who put their lives on the line everyday," he said.
At a sentencing hearing scheduled for June 1, Tanjuatco said prosecutors would seek the maximum penalty of life without parole, plus 70 years, for the 17-year-old Bun.
In closing arguments earlier in the day, prosecutors noted that Bun’s testimony Thursday conflicted with the evidence.
"The conflict that you saw came from that lying coward over there,” Tanjuatco told the jury, pointing at Bun. “He even told you he was lying.”
Defense attorney Lloyd Matthews said his client shot and killed Daly in self-defense. The lawyer questioned witnesses' accounts of Daly’s encounter with Bun on July 20, 2011.
Matthews asked the jury to consider only one of the 18 counts against his client -- theft by receiving a stolen gun, the one used to shoot Daly -- accusing prosecutors and witnesses of manufacturing testimony about Bun trying to shoot other deputies.
“They’re calling my client a lying coward,” Matthews told jurors. “But there were other lies told.”
Besides Daly's death, Bun was charged with attempting to shoot other deputies working with Daly that day.
Matthews said those deputies were in no danger after Bun shot Daly.
“They are exaggerating the threat" to the other deputies, Matthews said. Two of the deputies never even left their vehicle, he said.
Fugitive squad deputies initiated the traffic stop that led to Daly’s encounter with Bun. The deputies were riding in an unmarked truck when they began following the car Bun was riding in.
Bun told the jury on Thursday that he was "paranoid" when he noticed the truck following him and the driver, and took out his gun intent on protecting them.
Matthews told the jury his client didn’t recognize Daly was a law enforcement officer when Daly approached the car, and Bun reacted instinctively.
“He felt he was threatened,” Matthews said. “He had a gun in his lap, he said it happened quickly and a person came up on the car with a gun. You can very easily make an inference that he acted in self-defense.”
But prosecutors said Bun acted with criminal intent when he stepped from the car, shot Daly once in the shoulder, then pushed the deputy to the ground and shot again.
“The whole notion that he thought an enemy was after him is a farce,” Clayton Assistant District Attorney Lelaine Briones said as she summarized the prosecution’s case. “The defendant knew he was wanted and chose to do whatever he had to do to anyone who got in his way.
From the stand Thursday, Bun said that “85 percent of what I said was a lie” in a videotaped interview recorded after the shooting and replayed for jurors Friday.
Briones told jurors that likely, 100 percent of Bun'swords were untrue, challenging his assertion that he reacted instinctively to Daly approaching the car.
“He laid in wait for Deputy Daly,” she said. “From the moment that car stopped, he prepared to shoot and murder Deputy Daly.”
Matthews wondered aloud if a different strategy for approaching Bun on the day of the shooting might have saved Daly’s life.
“If you believe the [wanted signs], this is somebody who was armed and dangerous,” Matthews said. “Daly shouldn’t have been sent there to be ambushed.”
He said the lead fugitive investigator should not have let Daly approach Bun alone.
“They should’ve surrounded the car and gotten somebody on a bullhorn to order him out of the car,” Matthews said. “If they did it that way, Deputy Daly would still be alive.”
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