World Courant
A person already serving a life sentence for the 2014 dying of an Arizona teenager was convicted Thursday of first-degree homicide within the killing of one other Tucson lady years earlier.
Pima County Superior Courtroom jurors additionally discovered Christopher Clements, 42, responsible of kidnapping and housebreaking within the dying of Isabel Celis, who was 6 when she vanished from her mother and father’ dwelling in 2012.
Clements is scheduled to be sentenced March 25.
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Jurors started deliberating Tuesday in Clements’ retrial, which started Feb 7. Jurors within the earlier trial failed to succeed in a verdict final 12 months, prompting a mistrial.
Clements turned a suspect in Celis’ dying in 2017, when he instructed FBI brokers that he may make them the lady’s stays — however mentioned he had nothing to do along with her dying — in alternate for having prices in an unrelated housebreaking case dropped, Tucson police mentioned.
In closing arguments Tuesday, Deputy County Lawyer Tracy Miller instructed jurors it was no coincidence that nobody besides Clements discovered Celis within the 5 years she was lacking, the Arizona Day by day Star reported.
Christopher Clements, who’s already serving a life sentence for the 2014 dying of an Arizona teenager, was convicted on Feb. 29, 2024, of first-degree homicide within the killing of one other Tucson lady years earlier. (Fox Information)
“He doesn’t come ahead until there’s something to achieve,” Miller mentioned. “There’s no different individual it may very well be.”
Clements’ legal professional, Eric Kessler, instructed jurors that nothing linked Clements to the crime and police could not show he entered the house, the Arizona Day by day Star reported.
Clements was arrested in 2018 within the deaths of Celis and 13-year-old Maribel Gonzalez, who disappeared in June 2014 whereas strolling to a good friend’s home.
Gonzalez’s physique was discovered days later in a distant space north of Tucson. Celis’ stays have been found years later in the identical common space.
Clements was sentenced to pure life in jail in 2022 for kidnapping and killing Gonzalez. Jurors in Clements’ retrial weren’t instructed of that conviction or his historical past of convictions for intercourse crimes in a number of states relationship again to when he was 16.
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Celis’ mom and brother have been each within the courtroom Thursday however left after the decision was learn, in line with Tucson TV station KOLD.
A name to Kessler looking for touch upon the decision was not instantly returned.
Miller instructed KOLD that the “jury did a terrific job sorting by the entire proof and the entire information we needed to attain what we consider was the correct consequence.”
