WACO, Texas — Jury deliberations began at 9:45 am on Friday for the trial of former Waco attorney Seth Sutton. Sutton was charged with criminal solicitation of capital murder in 2020.
Throughout deliberation, the jury requested more audio recording evidence and clarification over the charges.
The last request from the jury was informing the judge they had reached an impasse to which the defense objected to. The judge overruled the motion but took them on an Allen charge, which are a set of instructions given to a hung jury to get them to agree on a verdict.
In an unexpectedly quick end to testimonies, both the State and defense rested their cases Thursday. A verdict was expected to come Friday afternoon.
Sutton was indicted along with another Waco attorney Chelsea Tijerina, who has since passed away. They were accused of plotting to kill Marcus Daniel Beaudin, Tijerina's ex-husband. Beaudin is accused of sexually molesting a young relative of Sutton's.
The defense argued Sutton was coerced into the plot by an undercover Waco Police Department detective.
Closing arguments started with the prosecution telling the jury Sutton had many intentional plans to kill Beaudin. Those included killing him on the road, getting drunk, killing him then calling it suicide, "blow his brains out," and lure Beaudin into having sex with Sutton's wife, then kill him and say Beaudin sexually assaulted her.
The prosecution called Beaudin a "degenerate" and called the plot to him "vigilante justice."
It became solicitation, the prosecution said, when Sutton told the undercover officer to purchase a $300 gun with bullets.
Sutton's attorney, Clint Broden, said the undercover officer initiated the conversations with Sutton and volunteered to do it.
"How much are you going to let him sell you?" Broden asked the jury about the undercover officer.
Broden told jurors it’s okay if they cannot reach a verdict as they will have to live with this decision for the rest of their lives.
State came back saying the undercover officer went rogue because it was the right thing to do. Attorney Pat Sloane called the undercover officer a righteous one who put his life on the line
“Do justice, uphold the law and be righteous,” Sloane said in closing.
The State brought Detective Sam Key to the stand Thursday. Key is in charge of the Waco Police Department Special Crimes Unit, responsible for investigating violent crimes in Waco.
The Drug Enforcement Unit informed Key of the investigation into Sutton on May 21, 2020. From there, Key became the lead in the investigation.
In court, the jury saw video of Sutton being taken in for questioning by Key and another officer.
In the video, Key can be heard reading Sutton his Miranda Rights and explaining why Sutton was arrested.
May 14, 2020, is when Key documented that Sutton told the undercover officer he wanted to kill Beaudin. That conversation was never recorded by the officer.
Sutton can also be heard saying if someone said he was plotting to kill someone, it was a lie.
The State also brought in another police official who was in charge of extracting information from Sutton and Tijerina's phone's after their arrest. The official says there were two phone numbers with a form of the name 'Seth Sutton' attached to them.
Tijerina's phone records indicated there had been at least 30 to 50 messages that were missing between her and Sutton. However, Key admitted the rest of Tijerina's phone messages were not searched.
Once the State rested its case, the defense took less than five minutes for theirs and only included a stipulation, which was one sentence long.
The statement said Beaudin was not told of any potential threat on his life by law enforcement from the time the undercover officer said Sutton told him he wanted to kill Beaudin up until Sutton was arrested.
Key told the jury the statement was in fact true and his signature was shown at the bottom of that statement.
Once that was acknowledged, the defense rested its case.