THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, June 7, 1996 TAG: 9606070437
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JON FRANK, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH LENGTH: 97 lines
Billy Joe Brown, the Navy SEAL trainee convicted Wednesday of murder, abduction and attempted rape in the death of Georgia college student Jennifer L. Evans, was sentenced to 72 years in prison on Thursday.
The jury also fined Brown $63,000. A juror contacted Thursday night said the fines represented $1,000 for each of the 21 years of Evans' life, multiplied by the number of convictions.
The jury of nine men and three women discussed the sentence for about two hours Thursday morning, after taking almost 12 hours over two days to convict Brown.
Brown received 42 years for murder, 25 years for abduction with intent to defile, and five years for attempted rape.
Under the state's no-parole provisions, the earliest Brown, 24, could be released would be at age 60 under a geriatric conditional release program, said a Parole Board spokesman.
The sentence is the ``functional equivalent'' of life behind bars, Commonwealth's Attorney Robert Humphreys said. He said he considered the sentence to be ``more than fair, right in there where it ought to be.''
The juror contacted on Thursday evening, who asked not to be identified, said the jury was not divided at any point of the discussions. Instead, the panel deliberated methodically through all of the evidence, jury instructions and possible penalties before arriving at their conclusions.
Soon after entering the jury room on Tuesday, he said, the jurors agreed that Brown was guilty.
``Based on the evidence presented and Brown's own testimony, that was the majority of feeling at the beginning of the thing,'' the juror said.
Brown's co-defendant, fellow SEAL trainee Dustin A. Turner, had been scheduled to go to trial on June 25, but the case was continued Thursday to Aug. 26. Turner is charged with murder and abduction with intent to defile. He, too, faces a possible life term.
The sentence, while not the maximum life sentence allowed by Virginia law, appeared to be satisfactory to the victim's family and friends.
``He will essentially not be on the street ever again to do this to anyone else,'' said Delores Evans, Jennifer Evans' mother.
Andria Burdette, one of two friends who were vacationing with Jennifer Evans when she disappeared, said, ``There is relief that he can never do that again.''
As he did Wednesday, Al Evans, father of the victim, placed much of the blame for his daughter's death on the Navy.
``The Navy has a very serious mission and has to take it seriously,'' he said. ``They have accepted the task but have not accepted the responsibility. They simply have not done it.''
Al and Delores Evans said Wednesday that the Navy should have weeded out ``bad seeds'' like Turner and Brown, especially in choosing men for the SEALs, its elite commando unit.
Jennifer Evans was vacationing in Virginia Beach last June with friends when she disappeared from The Bayou, a bar near the Oceanfront.
After first denying any involvement in Evans' disappearance, Brown and Turner both admitted on June 27 that they hid her body in a wooded ditch in a Newport News park on June 19, 1995.
They blamed each other for strangling her.
Turner said Brown killed Evans while the three were sitting in Turner's Geo in The Bayou parking lot.
Brown told police that Turner picked up Evans at The Bayou early in the morning of June 19. With Evans passed out in Turner's car, Brown said, the two men took the Emory University student to a back street in Virginia Beach and tried to have sex with her. When she resisted, Brown said, Turner strangled her while Brown held her down.
Brown also told police in a later statement that Turner killed Evans in his car in the nightclub parking lot before Brown walked up to the car. Then, Brown said, he helped his Turner dispose of the body.
Prosecutors pursued Brown's first story as the truth. They also produced five witnesses who testified that Brown and Turner made it their ``hobby'' to pick up women and get them to engage in group sex, or ``tag-team sex.'' Evans was the last of these women, and when she resisted, she was killed.
Brown testified during his trial that his close relationship with Turner, and the military code of honor that SEALs are taught to respect, explained why he lied to police. Brown said he was trying to protect Turner, whom he claimed to love like a brother.
But Circuit Judge A. Bonwill Shockley told Brown on Thursday just before formally sentencing him that his excuses were a perversion of the military code of honor.
``I know of no military organization that places self-indulgence and self-preservation above the laws and rules they were sworn to protect,'' Shockley said. ``Laws were broken, rules were broken, and we find ourselves here because of it.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photos
VICKI CRONIS/The Virginian-Pilot
Andria Burdette, who visited the Beach with Jennifer Evans last
June, embraces Evans' mother, Delores. Ex-FBI agent Irv Wells, who
befriended the family when Evans was missing, watches.
Jennifer Evans: The next trial, of Dustin Turner, will be Aug. 26.
KEYWORDS: MURDER STRANGULATION KIDNAPPING
TRIAL SENTENCING by CNB