By Rose Laudicina
Staff Writer
Although Laurence Alvin Lovette Jr. maintains his innocence in the murder of UNC student body president Eve Carson on March 5, 2008, it only took 12 jury members less than three hours to find him guilty.
After spending nearly a week and a half listening to the state present evidence and the defense attempt to devalue testimony from witnesses, the seven men and five women of the jury returned the verdict Tuesday morning that they were convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that Lovette was guilty.
“I knew we had strong evidence,†District Attorney Jim Woodall said about the outcome of the case. “I never pretend to know what a jury will pick. But because the jury came back fairly quickly, I was pretty confident that they found him guilty on all charges.â€
Lovette was found guilty of first-degree murder, which has an automatic sentence of life in prison without parole.
He was also found guilty of kidnapping and robbery, which will carry additional sentences.
“This case is such a tragedy,†Assistant District Attorney James Rainsford said to the jury in his closing argument. “What the defendant did was greedy, miserable, cruel and useless, and that is what murder is.â€
With the trial at an end and media coverage surrounding the event winding down, Woodall said he hopes the Chapel Hill and UNC community can start to gain closure from the tragic death of Carson.
While reminders of Carson remain scattered across the community – a memorial garden dedicated to her on UNC’s campus and both an annual 5K memorial run and scholarship in her name – the sadness that emanated from the murder can begin to dissipate as the focus shifts to a celebration of her life.
“There is always a place to remember Eve Carson and remember what she meant to the university and the community,†Woodall said.
The trial
In closing arguments, the state went back through key evidence presented during the trial, including the ATM photo that prosecutors said shows Lovette driving Carson’s car, video footage taken the night of the murder from outside a sorority house that they maintain depicts Lovette and Demario Atwater and testimony from important witnesses, such as Shanita Love and Jayson McNeil.
“The evidence that has been presented in this case allows us to literally look back in time to March 5, 2008, and see these events unfold,†Rainsford said.
This look back into what happened in the early morning hours of March 5 rendered pictures so vivid that on multiple occasions jurors were left in tears.
Witness accounts told of Carson’s final moments before she was shot four times with a handgun and once in the head with a sawed-off shotgun.
In showing the ATM photo during closing arguments, Rainsford argued that Carson could be seen raising her hands in prayer, corroborating McNeil’s testimony that Lovette said she asked him and Atwater to pray with her.
The defense tried to invalidate the statements of the state’s witnesses, saying they had ulterior motives and showed bias in their testimony.
While the prosecutors admitted that some of their witnesses were not the most upstanding citizens, they argued that their testimony was nonetheless important and trustworthy.
“The State of North Carolina didn’t choose those witnesses; the defendant chose those witnesses,†Woodall said, indicating Lovette’s mistake in telling his friends details regarding the murder and his involvement.
In their closing arguments, the defense claimed that the story told of what happened was incomplete, and that there were major witnesses missing in the case, namely Atwater.
Defense attorney Karen Bethea-Shields told jurors that Atwater “knows the secrets of what happened,†and implied that the state had declined to call Atwater as a witness because his story would conflict with the state’s evidence against Lovette.
“The state’s burden was to give you everything you needed,†Bethea-Shield told the jury. She maintained the prosecution had been unable to do so, giving the jury more than reasonable doubt.
But in the end, the jury had no lingering questions, and the state’s case was sufficient for jury members to return a guilty verdict
Both Lovette’s mother and Carson’s parents were present during the trial and were in the courtroom when the verdict was read.
The Carsons have elected to not make a statement about the case and asked Woodall to tell the court, the jury and the police involved in the case that they were thankful for all the work they had done.
“I hope it gives some degree of closure, but I don’t think there will ever be complete closure,†Woodall said of the verdict. “I think it will be part of our collective history as a community.â€