THOUSAND OAKS : Judge Allows Photos of Victim at Hearing
Prosecutors seeking the death penalty for a Thousand Oaks man can show the jury two pictures of slain Westlake nurse Kellie O’Sullivan--one of the victim with her son and one with her mother, a judge ruled Wednesday.
The ruling came five days after Ventura County Superior Court Judge Charles R. McGrath denied prosecutors permission to put the relatives on the witness stand.
Prosecutors had wanted O’Sullivan’s 6-year-old son and her mother to testify at a hearing to determine whether Mark Scott Thornton will be put to death for the woman’s murder. Thornton was convicted last month of first-degree murder with a special circumstance that makes him eligible for the gas chamber.
Prosecutors say he kidnaped the 33-year-old nurse outside a Thousand Oaks pet store on Sept. 14, 1993, and later shot her three times in the Santa Monica Mountains.
Prosecutors at the death-penalty hearing, set to start Monday, were also asking to introduce evidence of alleged misconduct by Thornton at the Ventura County Jail, where he has been housed since O’Sullivan’s body was found 12 days after her slaying.
Information on the exact nature of those allegations and McGrath’s ruling was not available. The judge granted a defense motion to exclude the public and the press from that hearing.
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