RENO - Jurors deciding whether a man convicted of kidnapping, raping and murdering a 19-year-old college student will return to court today after ending deliberations Tuesday without a sentence.
The same Washoe District Court jury that found James Biela guilty last week of murdering Brianna Denison and sexually assaulting two other college coeds deliberated for nearly three hours Tuesday evening after hearing emotional statements from Denison's mother and Biela himself.
Judge Robert Perry instructed them to return at today.
Biela's public defenders argued the 28-year-old Sparks pipe fitter should be sentenced to prison for life without the possibility of parole, partly because he grew up in poverty in a household where his father beat his mother on nearly a daily basis.
But Bridgette Denison urged jurors to show no mercy for the man responsible for their family's profound sense of loss since her daughter's murder in January 2008.
"James Biela, I am before you today as a person that has suffered more tragedy than any other mother should ever live with," she said. "It sickens me to know my poor baby girl was with you the last moments of her life.
"I know that James Biela is asking for mercy. I do not believe he deserves any mercy," Denison told jurors.
Biela apologized in a short statement to jurors before they began sentencing deliberations. He said he was sorry that he would not be able to see his son grow up and that if he failed his son, but he wanted him to know "this might not be the time or place, but I love you. That's it. I don't know what else to say. I'm sorry."
"I just wanted to say I'm sorry that this incident has destroyed several families," Biela told the jurors.
The sexual assaults began in the fall of 2007 around the campus of the University of Nevada, Reno, just north of the downtown casino district. They culminated in Denison's strangulation in January 2008.
Jurors also had heard from Biela's sister Kristi Jackson, who testified how Biela's abusive father terrorized the family. "We pretty much spent our whole childhood afraid of the men in our lives," she said, adding that her brother was a good father to his son.
Lawyers for both sides put the death penalty itself on trial during their closing arguments.
Public defender Maizie Pusich said sentencing Biela to life in prison without parole "is enough to protect us. It is enough to punish Mr. Biela." Deputy District Attorney Elliott Sattler urged the jurors to resist any temptation to take the easy way out by "falling back on the fact we are safe and comfy because he is locked away in prison."
Sattler said he agreed with the public defenders who said the death penalty should be reserved for the "worst of the worst," but he added that Biela fits that category because of how Denison was
strangled.
"He could have used his bare hands," he said, referring to the way the ex-Marine and martial arts student strangled Denison using a pair of underwear he stole from her friend. "He could have snapped her neck and killed her if he wanted to. He chose not to do that. He killed her in a sick and sadistic way that was directly tied into what he had done earlier."