10:10 p.m.

This is where I’m supposed to find the words to sum up the last five weeks.

It’s strange—after hundreds of posts that span 131 pages on TBO, you’d think I’d have a lot to say. Instead—and not for the first time during this trial—I find myself struggling to find the words.

People have asked me how I deal with covering a case so heinous, with evidence so disgusting it brings grown men and women to tears. Part of the skill is to be a bit disconnected, to not get too wrapped up in the story, to not consider too deeply what you’ve just heard or seen.

That’s worked in the past, certainly as I ran around on other heart-wrenching stories such as 9-11 (covered from the relative safety of northern Alabama), or a year later, an airport shooting in Los Angeles where I was hot on the trail of the first responders.

Writing about the garbage bags with two little holes where Jessica Lunsford’s fingers stuck out is easier than just sitting there and seeing it. Same goes for the autopsy photos, which I actually chose not to view.

That’s why the work of the jury is so remarkable. They sat there, and they stared at the evidence. Then they had to make decisions about what it all meant.

I chronicled.

Long and short, serious and silly, I had the unique role of writing it as it happened. No time to process it all, to look too closely at the holes or the speaker wire that bound Jessie’s hands together. No long looks at the stuffed dolphin, stained and dirty, that she clutched as she died.

One of the jurors, Thais Prado, summed it up well when she said the image of Jessie lying on an autopsy table may remain with her for the rest of life.

I wouldn’t be surprised.

Prado, 20, stole a lot of quick glances at Couey during the trial, sizing up the tiny man in the oversized suit.

She said she tried to reconcile his craggly appearance with what she heard from prosecutors. She tried to make sense of how he could kill a little girl by burying her alive.

I wouldn’t be suprised that if she thought about it for the rest of her life, she’d be no closer to an answer.

We have a certain ingrained vision of what our monsters are supposed to be like. Emotionless and acting every part the little boy, for Prado and probably others, Johnny Couey just didn’t fit the bill.

Prado and another juror said their impressions of Couey’s courtroom demeanor and appearance didn’t play into their decision-making.

After the jury’s recommendation was read, after Couey was led out of the courtroom in shackles, after Mark Lunsford and others shared hugs and tears, I sat for a few moments and took a few last looks around Courtroom 4-1.

I watched the clerks pack up the evidence.

They grabbed the garbage bags, the ones where Jessie poked two tiny fingers through, and placed them in a box.

A photo, the iconic picture of Jessie wearing a pink floppy hat, also got packed away.

It’s an image anyone who’s followed the case won’t be able to forget.

Jessie in life, smiling and happy.

It’s packed away with all the other elements of her death.

They’ll be kept for a long time, for future appeals, probably until after Couey’s dead.

One can only hope they won’t be pulled out again—that the dolphin or the trash bags, the mattress stained with Jessie’s blood and her autopsy photos—won’t have to be shown to another jury. Ever.

It’d be nice, too, if there weren’t any other files opened up for other boys and girls, killed by men like Couey.

Thank you for reading, for asking questions, for making me look at things in this case and around the courtroom in a different way.

It’s been quite an experience, made all the easier because I know this blog has helped some people follow the case better.

I only wish that this was a process that won’t repeated. Not for Jessie. Not for any child.

7:07 p.m.

Three of the jurors on the John Couey trial just finished talking to reporters.

Two of the people, Thais Prado and Marvin Gunn, were jurors who voted. The third man, Osvaldo Pradere, was an alternate.

The group met Mark Lunsford before speaking to reporters. Prado, 20, cried after hugging the man who she’d sat across from for nearly three weeks, staring at his sullen, pained face.

Prado also spent a lot of time looking over at Couey during the proceedings. She said she tried to reconcile the horror of the testimony with the tiny man sitting at the defense table, coloring.

None of the jurors wanted to discuss specific votes, or too much about the deliberations. But Prado said that some of the jurors seemed to buy into the argument that Couey is retarded.

The deliberations were careful and methodical, Prado and Gunn said. When someone suggested that the hour and 10 minutes it took jurors to return a recommendation of death for Couey was quick, Gunn replied, “It didn’t seem quick.”

The pair said they felt prosecutors had an overwhelming amount of evidence, and the DNA and fingerprints and other items shown were too strong to ignore.

Gunn said he entered deliberations during the guilt phase not knowing Couey at all. He said he wished he would have heard more about Couey’s background during the first phase. It might not have changed his vote, but it would have been good information to have.

Prado said in Spanish that she felt the verdict was significant for the community. She said she believed it would prevent more deaths like the one Jessie had to endure.

The group clearly bonded over the experience. They played Pictionary. The first night, the group watched the gory horror flick, Saw. Gunn said.

He said reconciling the movie’s violence with the real violence recounted in the courtroom made him realize that many people were numb to gore and death. “We’re desensitized to it,” he said.

All three said the experience of serving on the Couey case was a life-changing experience.

Pradere, the alternate, said he would see his children in a new light.

“I will definitely hold them closer,” he said.

Prado, for one, said the images of Jessica on a medical examiner’s table would stick with her for a very long time.

“These are pictures are very alive in my mind,” she said, moments after shedding tears with Lunsford. “Those are going to be very hard to forgot.

“If I ever do.”

6:21 p.m.

“This is justice for Jessie,” Mark Lunsford says.

He said he felt relief, but still a bit of anger, when a clerk read the jury’s recommendation supporting death for his daughter’s killer.

His eyes are a bit red, his hair tossling in the wind. He fidgets with a pair of sunglasses in his hand—bends them to nearly the point of breaking. He wrinkles his toes in his black shoes.

Someone asks whether he has experienced closure now. He didn’t know how to answer the question two weeks ago.

He doesn’t have an answer now.

He makes it clear he isn’t done talking about Jessie. He isn’t done trying to protect other children from sex offenders.

“It doesn’t stop here,” he says, sniffling, still bending his glasses—nearly to the point of breaking.

6:15 p.m.

After Sheriff Jeff Dawsy spoke, next up was Brad King, the State Attorney who has overseen the case.

Both Dawsy and King have been criticized by some for their handling of the case.

You would think that there would be a sense of vindication and joy from prosecutors. Not so, King said.

“This has been a very long road, two years and we have always had our eye on goal and that was to see that a jury recommend the death sentence” for John Couey, King said.

“That doesn’t give anybody any sense of satisfaction because it doesn’t change what happened to Jessica Lunsford,” he said.

King laid out the next few weeks—there will be another hearing in about a week in Citrus County. Judge Ric Howard needs to hold a “retardation hearing” to decide, once and for all, whether Couey is retarded.

Couey needs to be sentenced within 30 days.

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