LAS VEGAS (AP) - A jury has convicted a man of fatally shooting a Las Vegas liquor store clerk during an attempted robbery in 2016, finding him guilty on all nine counts including armed robbery and kidnapping.
The jurors who convicted Ray Charles Brown, 26, on Wednesday are now expected to decide whether he should receive the death penalty or a prison sentence.
Brown was charged with murder, robbery with a deadly weapon, first-degree kidnapping, burglary while in possession of a firearm, coercion with a deadly weapon, conspiracy to commit robbery and assault with a deadly weapon.
The shooting of 24-year-old store clerk Matthew Christensen in liquor store was captured on surveillance video, authorities said.
Brown faces capital punishment because he pulled the trigger after demanding Christensen open the store’s safe, prosecutors said.
Christensen was shot multiple times after he could not open the safe, authorities have said. Christensen was protecting his pregnant co-worker by not telling the suspects she knew the combination, prosecutors have said.
“The last three-and-a-half years have been very hard on us,” Christensen’s mother Theresa Christensen told the Las Vegas Review-Journal. “We’ve just been waiting for this day for very long.”
Defense attorney Josh Tomsheck argued that Brown was not the man in the video who fired the six shots that killed Christensen.
Tomsheck pointed to what he called an “overwhelming lack of evidence,” including the lack of DNA, footprints and fingerprints. He said another man was responsible for the killing.
Two co-defendants in the case have pleaded guilty and have been sentenced for their roles, prosecutors said.
Lee Dominic Sykes, 24, accepted a guilty plea to first-degree murder with a weapon and is serving more than 65 years in state prison.
Lee Murray Sykes, 26, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and robbery and is serving up to 40 years.
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