A Schoharie County Court jury Monday found Gerry A. King guilty of murdering his father in Sharon last November.
King, 38, was found guilty of second-degree murder, a Class A1 felony, by the 10-woman, two-man jury at about 2:55pm Monday after three days of deliberations.
Sentencing is scheduled for Wednesday, November 17 at 9:30am in county court. King, of Sprakers, faces 25 years to life in prison.
King was arrested in Connecticut after his father’s body was discovered in his Staleyville Road home in Sharon on November 16, 2009.
George King’s body was discovered by a neighbor who had been asked to check up on him after the 63-year-old truck driver failed to show up for work.
In a statement from a 15-year-old witness shortly after the murder, King told the boy that he killed his father.
“He’s dead,” King told the boy according to police. “I killed him.”
King’s attorney Mark Gaylord tried to switch the jury to a charge of manslaughter and convince the jurors that King was drunk when he argued and then beat his father.
The attorney said King was too drunk to make any conscious choices and a manslaughter charge is called for if the defendant is too intoxicated to form intent.
Schoharie County District Attorney James Sacket rejected the notion that King was too drunk noting that he was not too intoxicated to go back to the scene of the crime to clean up his bloody fingerprints and get a hat he left there.
Testimony showed, Mr. Sacket said, that King talked about killing and hurting his father for more than two years.
Mr. Sacket was unavailable for comment after the trial.
The trial began with jury selection on September 13 with about 85 people in the jury pool.
Jury selection was completed on September 14. Opening arguments were delivered on September 15 and several witnesses gave testimony for four days. After one day of recess, the jury got the case after closing arguments on Thursday.
The jury sat for a read back of more than 150 pages of testimony on Friday before being sent home for the weekend.
The jurors reconvened for deliberations on Monday morning.
King was found in a van in Connecticut with his girlfriend Joleen Henderson, of Sprakers, and her mother Alice Williams, 72, of Sharon Springs, both of whom face hindering prosecution charges.