Service on Murder Case Was Tough, Juror Says
Participating in Justin Helzer’s quintuple murder trial was not only a four-month exercise in civic duty, but a wrenching, emotional roller-coaster for the jury that recommended the death penalty in the case this week, a juror said in a newspaper interview.
“I think that was the hardest thing any of us will ever do in life,” the woman, known as Juror No. 6, told the San Francisco Chronicle as she recalled the hours of grisly testimony and anguished deliberations the panel endured. “I don’t wish this on anybody else.”
Helzer, 32, received death sentences Tuesday for the 2000 slayings of Selina Bishop, 21, the daughter of blues guitarist Elvin Bishop, and of an elderly Concord couple, Ivan and Annette Stineman. He was sentenced to life in prison without parole for the murders of Bishop’s mother, Jennifer Villarin, and the mother’s friend, James Gamble.
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