{"id":81176,"date":"2022-01-26T22:30:00","date_gmt":"2022-01-27T07:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/jury-deliberations-last-through-second-day-in-trial-for-yakutat-killing\/"},"modified":"2022-01-26T22:30:00","modified_gmt":"2022-01-27T07:30:00","slug":"jury-deliberations-last-through-second-day-in-trial-for-yakutat-killing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/jury-deliberations-last-through-second-day-in-trial-for-yakutat-killing\/","title":{"rendered":"Jury deliberations last through second day in trial for Yakutat killing"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Jury deliberation in a trial stemming from a 2018 stabbing death in Yakutat stretched into a third day with no verdict released as of Thursday evening. <\/p>\n<p>The trial began approximately three weeks ago, with closing statements from the defense and prosecution on Wednesday afternoon.<\/p>\n<p>The defendant, John Lee Stapleton, 50, is being tried in the killing of John Fergerson, 61. Stapleton is charged with two counts of second-degree murder and one count of first-degree murder. He faces up to 99 years in prison if convicted. The minimum sentence for first-degree murder is 30 years imprisonment, under Alaska statute.<\/p>\n<p>Once the jury finishes deliberating, they will announce their verdict on the charges, ending the trial. The sentencing by Superior Court Judge Amy Mead will come later.<\/p>\n<p>The defense was led by public defender Eric Hedland. District Attorney Angie Kemp led the prosecution.<\/p>\n<p><em>&#8226; Contact reporter Michael S. Lockett at (757) 621-1197 or mlockett@juneauempire.com.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The jury will decide whether the defendant is guilty or innoncent of the charges. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":534,"featured_media":81177,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":9,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,4],"tags":[640,59,75],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-81176","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-home","category-news","tag-cops-and-courts","tag-crime","tag-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81176","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/534"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=81176"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81176\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/81177"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81176"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=81176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}