Jamie Hood, who never denied he killed an Athens-Clarke County police officer and wounded a second, was sentenced to life in prison without parole Friday.
The jury took less than two hours to reach its decision after weighing whether he should be sentenced to life in prison with or without parole or death.
Hood was convicted Monday of killing officer Elmer "Buddy" Christian on March 22, 2011, and murdering another man two months earlier, county works department employee Omar Wray.
As the jury’s decision was read, the courtroom was quiet except for the voices of the judge and the jurors who were polled about their decisions.
Christian’s widow dabbed tears with a tissue. Hood also shed tears when the sentence was announced.
This jury was made up of Elbert County residents who have been sequestered for a month and worked six days a week. The trial was in Athens, just miles from where Hood murdered Christian and wounded officer Tony Howard.
Hood was the first death penalty defendant in Georgia to represent himself at trial without a lawyer.
No one has been sentenced to die for a Clarke County crime since the death penalty was reinstated 40 years ago.
Hood always admitted he shot the two officers but he denied he killed Wray, who was a friend.
The jury convicted him of shooting Wray six times on Dec. 28, 2010, and killing him because he would not tell Hood where to find a certain drug dealer. They agreed that Hood should be sentenced to life with the possibility of parole for Wray’s murder.
The life without parole sentence, however, will keep him from ever being freed unless an appellate court steps in.
Hood’s crime received significant media coverage as it moved through the courts as well as when it happened.
The crime also received much media coverage.
There was a police lookout issued for Hood the afternoon of March 22, 2011, after one of Hood’s friends, Judon Brooks, refused to tell him the whereabouts of the same drug dealer who was trying to find when he shot Wray. Christian and Howard crossed paths with Hood after Howard pulled over an SUV being driven by one of Hood’s brothers.
Hood jumped out of the passenger side of the SUV, shooting Howard as he sprinted past the officer’s patrol car and then twice shooting Christian who had just pulled up.
Hood told the jury he did not intend to shoot Christian, a man he had never met, but he and Howard had a “bad history” that went back almost 15 years from when Hood was in the Clarke County Jail on a then-pending armed robbery charge. Hood said he heard his dead brother’s voice in his head warning him to not let police “do to you what they did to me.” Hood’s younger brother was shot and killed by a police officer.
Hood surrendered four days after he killed Christian but only after law enforcement agreed that it would be covered live on television because of Hood’s concerns he might be killed by police as his brother was in 2001.
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