MOBILE, Alabama – A prosecutor and defense lawyer today made competing accusations about who was responsible for the gruesome death of an Irvington woman almost three years ago.

Mobile County Assistant District Attorney Keith Blackwood said during closing arguments that all of the evidence points to Jerome Burton, the husband of victim Deborah Burton. He said Burton, 61, snapped after finding out that his wife planned to leave him over his excessive drinking and his failure to get a job.

“The defendant knew he was about to lose his provider, his caregiver, and he broke,” Blackwood said. “He horribly, horribly murdered her.”

Defense attorney Christine Hernandez did not dispute the sickening nature of Deborah Burton’s death – a combination of a gunshot to the head and a fire that burned two-thirds of her body. But she said the evidence points to the Burtons’ son, Jerome “Jay” Burton II.

“He wanted to get rid of his mom. He wanted to get rid of his dad. He thought he had,” she said. “It wasn’t Mr. Burton Sr. who snapped. It was Jay Burton II who snapped. He shot his mom.”

It will now be up to 12 Mobile County Circuit Court jurors to decide.

Law enforcement investigators locked in on the elder Burton almost from the start. With his wife dead and badly burned in a recliner in the living room on June 8, 2010, paramedics rushed the defendant to the hospital. He stayed there for more than two weeks, slowly recovering from injuries related to the fire.

According to testimony at the trial, Burton’s Glock pistol was on his bed, and it was a match to a spent .40-caliber shell casing found in the living room.

Much of the state’s case about motive rested with Jay Burton’s testimony. He testified that his father told him earlier that day that Deborah Burton was going to leave him and that he was distraught about it.

Blackwood dismissed accusations against Jay Burton by the defense. He pointed to testimony that Jay Burton relied heavily on his parents – especially his mother – for financial assistance and other help. After Deborah Burton’s death, in fact, Jay Burton was homeless for a time.

“He didn’t kill his mother; the defendant did,” Blackwood said. “Jay stood to benefit nothing by the death of his mother.”

Blackwood suggested that the defendant walked into his bathroom after starting the fire, tossed the gun on the bed and then went into an adjacent bathroom, where he likely expected to die.

“Deborah Burton was the rock of her family. … She was a giver even when giving was difficult,” he said. “He took her from this world forever and then he failed to take his own life.”

Hernandez, though, said there was not a single witness who saw the murder or could determine from scientific testing or other means who pulled the trigger or lit the match. She said her client was trapped in that bathroom, noting that he had put a wet towel over his head.

“Draping yourself with a wet towel does not seem to be the action of someone who wants to die,” she said.

Instead, Hernandez told jurors, plenty of evidence indicates that Jay Burton had the means, opportunity and motive to commit the crime. She pointed to testimony that he was angry at his mother for taking away a Toyota Corolla that his parents had given him but that he was not paying for. She also hassled him about taking care of his young children, Hernandez said.

Deborah Burton was her son’s moral conscience and “he just wanted his moral conscience to be quiet,” Hernandez said.

What’s more, Hernandez told the jury, Jay Burton recently had found out that his mother was going to cut him out of her will. That same will, which had not yet been filed, listed the defendant as the beneficiary.

“If you’re going to divorce someone, you’re not going to redo your will and leave everything to that person,” she said.

Prosecutors have taken the death penalty off the table, meaning that Burton automatically will be sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole if the jury convicts him of capital murder. Jurors have two less serious alternatives they can pick, as well – intentional murder and reckless manslaughter.

Blackwood urged the jury to reject those alternatives.

“I’m asking you to hold him fully accountable and find him guilty of capital murder,” he said.

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