Osgood found guilty on two counts of capital murder (updated)
Published 12:20 pm Friday, May 9, 2014
Chilton County jurors found James Osgood guilty on two counts of capital murder Friday morning.
Jurors deliberated one hour before arriving at the verdict.
The two counts of capital murder involve murder in commission of rape in the first degree and murder in commission of sodomy in the first degree.
The addition of the sex charges with the murder allegations elevated the potential punishment to the death penalty.
Chilton County Circuit Judge Sibley Reynolds recessed court for the day and told jurors the sentencing phase of the trial will begin at 9 a.m. Monday.
Jurors will hear evidence from both the prosecution and defense regarding the sentences available.
Reynolds explained to jurors that sentences available for capital murder include the death penalty or life in prison without the possibility of parole.
The prosecution is seeking the death penalty.
As the guilty verdicts were read in court, Osgood stared straight ahead and showed no emotion. Shortly after, officers with the Chilton County Sheriff’s Department escorted him out of the courtroom in handcuffs.
On Thursday, prosecutors urged jurors to find the truth and seek justice before starting deliberations Friday morning.
“A life was taken because James Osgood decided he wanted to fulfill some twisted fantasy to kill someone,” Chief Deputy District Attorney for the 19th Judicial Circuit District Attorney’s Office C.J. Robinson said in his closing remarks. “He enjoyed it. The same things you heard this week that turned your stomach, turned him on.”
After three days of testimony, the state rested its case around 2:30 p.m. Thursday. The defense rested without calling any witnesses.
Osgood, 44, of Shelby, is accused of killing Tracy Brown, 44, on Oct. 13, 2010.
Defense attorney Robert Bowers Jr. asked the 12-member jury (with two alternates) to look at the evidence presented in the case from “both sides.”
The defense attorneys never argued that their client didn’t commit murder.
However, Bowers suggested to the jury that sex acts performed the day Brown was murdered, between Osgood, Tanya Vandyke, 43, and Brown were consensual.
Vandyke, a co-defendant in the case, was Osgood’s girlfriend. She faces two counts of capital murder but is being tried separately from Osgood. Her trial will begin in December.
Bowers argued that Brown spent the morning with Vandyke, who was Brown’s cousin, and Osgood by her own free will and later invited them into her home.
“The judge will likely instruct you on another possible verdict of murder, intentional murder,” Bowers said. “Murder where you don’t have the added elements to make it a capital offense. We ask you to consider each element and strongly ask you to consider the lesser possibility of murder and not finding him guilty of capital murder.”
Earlier in the week, jurors heard a taped confession from Osgood to two investigators with the Chilton County Sheriff’s Department where Osgood described in detail the graphic accounts of sexual abuse performed on Brown by both Vandyke and Osgood before Osgood slashed Brown’s neck several times with a knife or knife-like object and later in the back twice before she died on her bedroom floor.