{"id":39102,"date":"2016-03-03T17:14:49","date_gmt":"2016-03-03T22:14:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/?p=39102"},"modified":"2016-03-03T17:14:49","modified_gmt":"2016-03-03T22:14:49","slug":"verdict-guilty-of-first-degree-murder-armed-robbery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/2016\/03\/verdict-guilty-of-first-degree-murder-armed-robbery\/","title":{"rendered":"Verdict: Guilty Of First-Degree Murder, Armed Robbery"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_39103\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-39103\" style=\"width: 250px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-39103\" title=\"Justin Writh\" src=\"http:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/Justin-Writh-250x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/Justin-Writh-250x300.jpg 250w, https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/Justin-Writh.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 250px) 100vw, 250px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-39103\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Justin Writh<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Justin Wirth, the 20-year-old\u00a0accused of killing\u00a0a Riverdale High School classmate and the boy&#8217;s mother in 2012, was convicted Thursday afternoon at the Lee County Justice Center.<\/p>\n<p>Closing arguments wrapped up around midday, and the jury deliberated for less than two hours before returning its guilty verdict on two counts of first-degree murder and one count of armed robbery.<\/p>\n<p>He&#8217;ll be sentenced at 1:30 p.m. on May 9.<\/p>\n<p>Wirth&#8217;s friend, Clayton Combs,\u00a0testified against him\u00a0in exchange for a 40-year prison sentence. Prosecutors rested their case Thursday morning, and the defense decided not to call any witnesses &#8212; including Wirth &#8212; to the stand.<\/p>\n<p>Many had wondered if Wirth would testify after Combs &#8212; also accused of murdering Dalton Haley and his mother, Amy Lorah, inside their Lehigh Acres home &#8212; told the jury Wednesday how he and Wirth decided to kill the mother and son to steal a safe they believed contained drugs and cash.<\/p>\n<p>The defense countered by saying Wirth, who was 16 at the time of the murders, was intimidated by detectives who didn&#8217;t allow him to speak with his parents.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Justin Wirth, the 20-year-old\u00a0accused of killing\u00a0a Riverdale High School classmate and the boy&#8217;s mother in 2012, was convicted Thursday afternoon at the Lee County Justice Center. Closing arguments wrapped up&hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":39103,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57,32],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39102"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39102"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39102\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39103"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}