Jurors Urged Not to Feel Sorry for Killer

A prosecutor told jurors Friday that the murder of a 67-year-old man by intruders in his Woodlands Hills home was a “deliberate and cold” act that justifies setting aside sympathy for the killer’s impoverished background and putting him to death.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Antoinette Decker told jurors in Van Nuys Superior Court not to feel sorry for Deavin M. Feagin, in deliberating whether to recommend he be executed or spend his life in prison without parole. Feagin, 22, who police say is a South-Central Los Angeles gang member, was convicted earlier this month of first-degree murder in the death of Howard King, who was shot to death in his home during a burglary on April 29, 1988.

Terill Ross, 20, was also convicted of the murder but does not face the death penalty because he was a juvenile at the time of the slaying.

Decker urged jurors not to feel sorry for Feagin, who had been described in a week of defense testimony by relatives and acquaintances as a product of an impoverished social environment. Witnesses said Feagin’s father was in prison, his mother on drugs and he slept in a small shed in the back yard of his grandparents’ house.

Decker said the killing, “is not society’s fault. It was his conscious decision.”