FRESNO — A jury decided Wednesday that Marcus Wesson should be put to death for killing nine of his children in a cult-like murder-suicide pact in this city's worst mass murder.
Jurors deliberated nine hours before deciding on the death penalty for the 58-year-old Wesson, who had been convicted June 17 on nine counts of homicide in the March 2004 shooting deaths, even though he probably did not fire the murder weapon. Testimony indicated that Wesson's 26-year-old daughter may have shot and killed her younger siblings before turning the gun on herself.
Wesson had subjected his children to years of incest and religious teachings that urged group suicide as a way to foil any attempt by government agencies to break up his family.
As the jurors walked into the courtroom, some smiling and waving and others near tears, Wesson, an aspiring songwriter, pretended to play a piano tune across the defense table.
Moments later, as the verdicts were read -- and each murder count was followed by a call for death -- Wesson looked straight ahead with his arms crossed and his hands clutching his shoulders.
Five of his seven surviving adult children, seated in the back row, held their heads in their hands and cried softly as their mother, Elizabeth Wesson, tried to comfort them.
Their father, wearing a bushy goatee, did not turn around to look at them.
Outside the courtroom, Fresno County prosecutor Lisa Gamoian, who had argued that Wesson directed the "extermination" of nine of his 16 children and "threw the babies in a pile like trash," declined to comment. "I can't say anything."
Defense attorney Peter M. Jones said he was "extremely disappointed" with the jury's decision. "You ask yourself, 'What more could I have done? What else could I have done?' You always second-guess yourself in a case like this."
Jones had argued that Wesson's life should be spared because he did not fire the murder weapon and his acts stemmed from an obvious mental illness -- two mitigating factors recognized by the courts. With a life sentence, he said, Wesson's surviving children could benefit from his "good side."
In addition to the nine counts of murder, Wesson had been found guilty two weeks ago of 14 counts of rape, oral copulation and sexual abuse involving three of his daughters and four of his nieces.
