UPDATED: Defendant in Wyatt Campbell Murder Trial Found Not Guilty

Updated (July 8 1:45 p.m.): After about six hours of deliberations, a jury found the 15-year-old defendant charged with the murder of Rose Hill teen Wyatt Campbell not guilty Friday morning. 

Jury members were not available for comment after the trial. The defendant let out a small sigh of relief upon hearing the verdict, while several members of the Campbell party left the courtroom in tears.

Deliberations started Thursday afternoon and continued Friday morning. The jury reached a verdict around 10:20 a.m.

The defendant had been standing trial for the October 14, 2010 stabbing death of 18-year-old Wyatt Campbell, a Rose Hill resident.

Defendant’s Brother Held for Contempt

Before the verdict was read, Judge Brett A. Kassabian demanded order in the courtroom, telling both parties that any outbursts or disruptions upon hearing the verdict would be dealt with “severely.”

But upon hearing the not guilty verdict, the defendant’s brother, David, stood up and started clapping.

Once the defendant had been escorted out of the courtroom, Kassabian gave David a chance to explain himself. David said he was happy for his brother, and that his brother hadn’t deserved to be there.

Kassabian was not satisfied, and, placing him in contempt of court, sentenced him to a day in jail. “This is not the Jerry Springer Show,” Kassabian said. “This is a courtroom.”

While the bailiff was cuffing David’s hands, David looked at Campbell’s party and said, “Who’s laughing now, b----?”

Angered, Kassabian called the statement “outrageous” and sentenced him to additional time.

The defendant was sent back to the juvenile detention center to be released immediately.

Thursday’s Closing Arguments

The trial was put to the jury around 12:40 p.m. Thursday, after the prosecution and defense presented their closing arguments.

Before Kassabian released the case to the jury, Cary Greenberg, the defense’s attorney, motioned again to strike the case.

“There is nothing that suggests malice,” he said, describing the killing as an act of self-defense by somebody who was “extremely petrified.” “There is no indication that this was an intentional killing. This case should not go to the jury.”

Kassabian disagreed, saying that these were all matters for a jury to decide.

During the prosecution’s closing arguments, commonwealth attorney Camille Turner stated that in order for the jury to come back with a verdict of guilty of second-degree murder, they had to establish that the defendant had killed Wyatt Campbell and done so with malice.

“You may infer malice because there was an unlawful killing,” she said, adding that there was deliberate use of a weapon, and that by the end of the fight, Campbell had suffered 12 stab wounds. “This was a brutal, malicious killing, and we would ask that you find the defendant guilty of murder.”

The defense used the closing arguments to reiterate that the defendant had been protecting himself.

“Nature’s oldest law is self-defense,” Greenberg said, reminding the jury that the defendant and his brother had been in a conflict with three people intending to do bodily harm. “These were people looking to fight and looking to hurt people in ways we can’t even imagine.”

Greenburg also brought up , , an unprocessed knife found in the back seat of car, and unidentified blood on the defendant’s brother’s car.

And when the fight stopped, Greenberg said, the defendant didn’t pursue Campbell or try to do him more harm. “There’s no indication that [the defendant] ever actively wanted to kill anybody,” he said.

“This is a serious case and a terrible tragedy, but a 15-year-old kid is entitled also to go on and live his life.”

Turner used her rebuttal to point out that the defendant’s side of the story came primarily from , and questioned whether the sheer number of wounds qualified as “more force than was reasonably necessary to repel the attack” from Campbell.

“If a person who you outweigh by 20, 30, 40 pounds is coming at you in a football crouch, is it necessary to stab them 12 times?” she asked the jury, holding up forensic photos of Campbell’s wounds. 

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After about six hours of deliberations, a jury found the 15-year-old defendant charged with the murder of Rose Hill teen Wyatt Campbell not guilty Friday morning. 

The jury was released for deliberations at 12:40 p.m. Thursday but was sent home at 5:30 p.m. with instructions to return at 9 a.m. Friday. They reached a verdict around 10:20 a.m.

The defendant had been standing trial for the October 14, 2010 stabbing death of 18-year-old Wyatt Campbell, a Rose Hill resident. 

Patch will have the full story shortly.