Missouri man kills himself in court after found guilty of sex crime

Started by Syt, July 03, 2013, 11:13:32 PM

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Syt

July 03, 2013, 11:13:32 PM
http://abcnews.go.com/US/missouri-man-apparently-kills-court-room-guilty-verdict/story?id=19567252#.UdT1u_nIata

QuoteMissouri Man Apparently Kills Self in Court Room After Guilty Verdict

Moments after a Missouri businessman was found guilty of sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl, a stunned courtroom looked on as he apparently ingested a lethal dose of cyanide, according to the Nodaway County Sheriff's Office.

Steve Parsons, 48, was convicted of statutory sodomy on June 27, a charge that could have carried up to seven years in prison.

As the judge polled each juror on their verdict, Sheriff Darren White said Parsons got up from the defense table, and walked over to where he was seated at the bailiff's station to get a drink.

Video Shows Arizona Millionaire's Apparent Court Room Suicide

"Steve Parsons is a guy I have known for years. This is a small community, so everybody knows everybody," White told ABCNews.com.

"He said, 'I'm going to throw up,' and he picked up one of the drinks, took a short sip, set it down and went back to his seat," White said.

Two minutes later, White said Parsons lowered his head, arched his back and began having a seizure while he was seated at the defense table.

"Everybody was pretty stunned," White said.

As an officer cleared out the court room, White, who is a former paramedic, and several other people with medical training, tried to care for Parsons until an ambulance arrived.

Parsons was taken to St. Francis Hospital in Maryville as doctors attempted to stabilize him, White said. He was transferred to Heartland Regional Medical Center in St. Joseph, Mo., where he was pronounced dead an hour and a half after the court room incident.

An autopsy was performed in Kansas City, where White said the coroner called it a "classic case of cyanide poisoning."

While the official toxicology report will not be available for a few more weeks, White said a search of Parsons' home and car showed he had ordered a quantity of cyanide.

Parsons' attorney Hugh Kranitz told ABCNews.com he had no idea what was going through his client's mind on the day of the verdict.

"He appeared to be like any other defendant, nervous and waiting for a verdict," Kranitz said.

Parsons' death came nearly one year to the day after an Arizona millionaire, who had just been convicted of arson, popped something into his mouth in the court room and died minutes later.

Michael Marin, 53, was convicted on June 28, 2012 of purposefully burning down his $2.55 million mansion in the tony Biltmore Estates neighborhood of Phoenix after he was unable to keep up with mortgage payments and a plan to raffle his house through a charity fundraiser failed. He faced up to 16 years in prison.

After the guilty verdict on one count of arson was read, a seemingly distraught Marin buried his face into his hands and appeared to place something in his mouth.

His face began to turn red. Minutes later, he took a sip of a liquid from a plastic sports bottle, turned to get a tissue, experienced convulsions and collapsed.

I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein's brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.
—Stephen Jay Gould

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Razgovory

#1
July 04, 2013, 01:09:15 AM
Hard to blame him.  You get found guilty of sex crime and it's pretty much over.
I've given it serious thought. I must scorn the ways of my family, and seek a Japanese woman to yield me my progeny. He shall live in the lands of the east, and be well tutored in his sacred trust to weave the best traditions of Japan and the Sacred South together, until such time as he (or, indeed his house, which will periodically require infusion of both Southern and Japanese bloodlines of note) can deliver to the South it's independence, either in this world or in space.  -Lettow April of 2011

Raz is right. -MadImmortalMan March of 2017

Phillip V

#2
July 04, 2013, 07:28:04 AM
Only a 7-year prison sentence for sodomizing a young girl? :wacko:

CountDeMoney

#3
July 04, 2013, 07:35:30 AM
Quote from: Phillip V on July 04, 2013, 07:28:04 AM
Only a 7-year prison sentence for sodomizing a young girl? :wacko:

Must've been the nice kind of sodomy, not the mean sodomy.

Richard Hakluyt

#4
July 04, 2013, 08:27:11 AM
Quote from: Phillip V on July 04, 2013, 07:28:04 AM
Only a 7-year prison sentence for sodomizing a young girl? :wacko:

"statutory sodomy"  :hmm:

HVC

#5
July 04, 2013, 08:30:43 AM
Quote from: Richard Hakluyt on July 04, 2013, 08:27:11 AM
Quote from: Phillip V on July 04, 2013, 07:28:04 AM
Only a 7-year prison sentence for sodomizing a young girl? :wacko:

"statutory sodomy"  :hmm:


oscar, no!
Being lazy is bad; unless you still get what you want, then it's called "patience".
Hubris must be punished. Severely.

Neil

#6
July 04, 2013, 08:30:55 AM
It was probably consensual.
I do not hate you, nor do I love you, but you are made out of atoms which I can use for something else.

Habbaku

#7
July 04, 2013, 09:26:39 AM
Statutory sodomy?  So I guess he did ask for anal.
The medievals were only too right in taking nolo episcopari as the best reason a man could give to others for making him a bishop. Give me a king whose chief interest in life is stamps, railways, or race-horses; and who has the power to sack his Vizier (or whatever you care to call him) if he does not like the cut of his trousers.

Government is an abstract noun meaning the art and process of governing and it should be an offence to write it with a capital G or so as to refer to people.
-J. R. R. Tolkien

stjaba

#8
July 04, 2013, 09:28:32 AM
Quote from: Habbaku on July 04, 2013, 09:26:39 AM
Statutory sodomy?  So I guess he did ask for anal.

Oral is also sodomy, at least in some states.

Malthus

#10
July 04, 2013, 10:02:35 AM
"Statutory sodomy" sounds like what you get when a political party you don't like is making the laws.  :hmm:
The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane—Marcus Aurelius

Ideologue

#11
July 04, 2013, 10:31:44 AM
Quote from: stjaba on July 04, 2013, 09:28:32 AM
Quote from: Habbaku on July 04, 2013, 09:26:39 AM
Statutory sodomy?  So I guess he did ask for anal.

Oral is also sodomy, at least in some states.

Is in SC.

Really, we should at least give people whose lives are about to be destroyed by the justice system the opportunity of controlled and assisted suicide.
Kinemalogue
Current reviews: The 'Burbs (9/10); Gremlins 2: The New Batch (9/10); John Wick: Chapter 2 (9/10); A Cure For Wellness (4/10)

Ed Anger

#12
July 04, 2013, 10:53:08 AM
Summary execution works better. Especially with perverts.
Stay Alive...Let the Man Drive

Eddie Teach

#13
July 04, 2013, 10:54:46 AM
Quote from: Ideologue on July 04, 2013, 10:31:44 AM
Really, we should at least give people whose lives are about to be destroyed by the justice system the opportunity of controlled and assisted suicide.

Voluntary capital punishment doesn't satiate the mob's bloodlust.
To sleep, perchance to dream. But in that sleep of death, what dreams may come?

Grey Fox

#14
July 04, 2013, 11:49:37 AM
Only 7  years? Around here it'll be 3 months!
Colonel Caliga is Awesome.
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