A seven-woman, five-man jury unanimously recommended late Monday afternoon that Andrew Reid Lackey be given the death penalty in the Halloween night 2005 killing of 80-year-old Charlie Newman.

Earlier in the day, the jury took just 2 1/2 hours to return a guilty verdict on all four counts in the capital murder trial in which testimony began on Wednesday. Jurors deliberated for just a half-hour Friday afternoon before Circuit Judge Bob Baker released them for the weekend with the admonition not to discuss the case with anyone, read newspapers or watch newscasts about the case.

The four-count indictment charged Lackey with capital murder during a burglary, capital murder during a robbery, burglary and robbery.

Deliberations began at 8:30 a.m. Monday and the jury came back with the guilty verdict about 11 a.m. Court reconvened at 1:30 p.m. Monday and Baker explained the options between sentencing Lackey to life in prison without parole or to death.

Defense attorney Randy Gladden of Huntsville put both of Lackey’s parents, father Michael Lackey and mother Sharon Lackey on the stand to provide mitigating circumstances to refute the state’s contention of aggravated circumstances that the death was “heinous, atrocious and cruel.” Both made impassioned pleas for their son’s life, punctuated by sobs.

They told a story of anguish. Sharon Lackey reiterated her testimony of Friday in which she told of a realizing soon after Andrew’s birth that “something wasn’t right.” She said her infant nearly starved to death when he would not breastfeed. She said her pediatrician made a notation that her infant son “failed to thrive,” and recommended he be given bottled formula.

Sharon Lackey said her son would not take his bottle if facing her, and she had to turn him around in her arms so he was facing away from her before he would take his bottle. Later, she said he was ambidextrous—used both hands equally—and a physician recommended she find computer games that would force him to choose his right or left hand because he was taxing his brain with “both sides firing.”

She bought her son the computer game Atari, but by the time he was 5 he had conquered all available games. Still, he would not relate to people and had no friends. His aunt on Monday testified that Andrew was passive and non-violent but when someone came into a room, he would turn his face to the wall.

On Friday, a psychologist, Frank Preston, testified that he found Lackey had an average intelligence and was sane and knew of right and wrong, but displayed signs of autism.

In testimony last week, witnesses said Lackey had four computers in his apartment and was known to stay up all night playing as many as seven games simultaneously.

District Attorney Kristi Valls said that Lackey was acting under the notion that Newman, a former building contractor, had a vault built into a room under his stairwell in which he kept large supplies of cash and gold bars.

Under questioning, Derrick Newman, the victim’s grandson, admitted that he told Lackey, who had been his friend since fourth grade, that his grandfather was “mean” and was a multimillionaire. He told Lackey he had seen his grandfather emerge once from the room under the stairs with a zippered bag of money.

It can be heard clearly on a recording of an open-line 911 call originating from Newman’s home on the night of the killing, someone repeatedly demanding, “Where’s the vault? Where’s the vault?”

The defense painted Derrick Newman as a controlling influence in Andrew Lackey’s life and Sharon Lackey said that Derrick influenced her son to buy him things for his car and other items from money Andrew earned as an e-Bay trader.

Gladden did not launch an insanity defense. With overwhelming evidence, including a gunshot wound to Lackey’s chest coming from Newman’s gun and the discovery of the gun in Lackey’s rental car, as well as overwhelming DNA evidence, the most Gladden could hope for was to save Lackey from the capital murder conviction.

A death sentence carries with it an automatic appeal.

Gladden contended that Lackey traveled to Newman’s home to rob him but had no intention to commit murder. Lackey used a stun gun on Newman to try to get him to tell him where the vault was.

Investigators theorize that Newman grabbed a gun he kept hanging from deer antlers in the den and shot Lackey. A pathologist said Newman was stabbed and slashed some 70 times and shot through the chest with his own gun.

“I’m not talking about the defendant being heinous, atrocious and cruel,” said Valls in asking the jury for the death penalty. “I’m talking about what he did. The man was desperate to stall until someone came from the 911 call or maybe that Andrew Lackey would show him some mercy – he didn’t.”

Valls said that Newman should have been able to feel safe in his home that night as he prepared to go to bed, donning a pair of blue pajamas and applying a Breathe-Rite strip to his nose before he was surprised by an intruder.

“By all testimony, Andrew Lackey was not desperate, he had plenty of money,” said Valls.

“He had no reason other than greed to go to that home and butcher an 80-year-old man to death,” she said.