The prosecution and defense rested in the Jason Eaton trial on Friday afternoon, and closing arguments are scheduled for Monday morning before the case goes to the jury.
The attempted murder trial has centered around questions of Eaton’s mental health and his state of mind in the days leading up to November 25, 2023, when he allegedly shot three Palestinian college students outside of his Burlington apartment.
Judge John Pacht had hoped to hand the case over to the jury by Friday afternoon. Then came a sluggish final morning of testimony and a drawn-out debate over juror instructions — including whether to grant the defense’s request to offer an option to convict Eaton of a lesser crime, such as aggravated assault.
Both sides finally rested shortly after 2 p.m. Attorneys estimated that their closing arguments could take upward of two hours, which meant the jury wouldn’t have gotten the case until at least 4:30 p.m.
Prosecutors wanted to forge ahead, while defense attorneys wanted to hold off, no doubt wary of asking jurors to begin deliberating on a Friday evening.
Pacht briefly left the courtroom to ask the jury’s preference. He returned to say he’d made the decision himself. Pushing closing arguments to Monday would give him more time to consider whether any lesser crimes could be allowed in juror instructions, he said.
The judge said closing arguments will begin promptly at 8:30 a.m. Monday, meaning the jury could get the case sometime around the lunch hour.
They will be asked to determine whether Eaton bears criminal responsibility for the shooting. They will base their assessment in part on the testimony of psychiatric experts, who disagreed on whether Eaton suffered from a severe mental illness.
Eaton has maintained that he shot the young men after receiving messages through FM radio and Bluetooth urging him to kill. He claimed to believe the young men were terrorists seeking to harm a Jewish family in his neighborhood that he had been watching over, testimony showed.
Eaton did not testify during the weeklong trial. But jurors heard him confess to the crime and describe it in his own words on a recording taken by his attorneys during an interview in prison five days after the shooting. His attorneys introduced part of the recording in an attempt to bolster his insanity defense.
He has also repeatedly spoken up while the jury is out of the courtroom to accuse his public defenders, Josh O’Hara and Peggy Jansch, of being ineffective.
He continued to criticize them on Friday for not voicing his objections. Pacht replied that he assumed this was because the veteran attorneys were filtering out objections they knew had no legal basis, likely because they know the law better than their client does.
“They don’t seem to!” Eaton shot back.
Later, amid the debate over juror instructions, Eaton demanded to know why manslaughter wasn’t on the table. Pacht patiently responded with a legal explanation, during which he mentioned the words “passion” and “provocation,” triggering an outburst from Eaton.
“If Anne Frank killed Adolf Hitler, would that be a provocation?” he asked in a frustrated tone. “If the people on Flight 93 in Shanksville, Penn., murdered their fellow passengers, is that a passion?”
“Jason, please, you’re not helping yourself,” Jansch said.
Got something to say?
Send a letter to the editor and we'll publish your feedback in print!
