Sep 12, 2008 5:48 pm US/Eastern
Witnesses Describe Death Scene In Hernandez Trial
Michael Hernandez Is Accused Of Killing A Schoolmate At Southwood Middle School Four Years Ago
ORLANDO (CBS4) ―
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Michael Hernandez in Orlando as jury selection got underway on Sept. 8, 2008.
CBS
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Jamie Gough was stabbed to death in the bathroom of Southwood Middle School in February, 2004.
CBS4 News
Prosecutors on Friday presented the jury with more witnesses who provided details of a student's death four years ago that they hope will be enough to find Michael Hernandez guilty of first-degree murder.
Former classmate Martin DeJesus, currently a Florida State University student, took the stand stating how he saw Hernandez and Jaime Gough in the hallway before school and the two were laughing and joking.
Another former classmate, Megan Hopper, testified that she saw Hernandez the morning of the killing with blood on his shirt, pants and shoes.
She said Hernandez told his first-period teacher, Claudette Levermore, he had a confrontation with another student, hurting himself against a door and bruising his nose.
In an attempt to thwart Hernandez's attorney's claim that his defendant was insane at the time of the killings, the state asked Hopper if Hernandez was a regular student. She said he was "friendly, social and talkative". T
he prosecution then called on Levermore and asked if she had expressed any concerns about Hernandez, and she said no.
A former classmate testified to a darker side of Hernandez found on his computer. Natalie Krakoski stated "It was a bunch of pictures, mutilated bodies, bloody stuff."
Jaime Gough's mother, Maria, buried her face in her hands in the courtroom and sobbed as photographs of the murder scene were shown to the jury. She was unable to sit through the nearly two-hour presentation.
Throughout the day, the defense attorney displayed on occasion a school yearbook, trying to impress on jurors that his client was only a bespectacled kid at the time of this murder, trying to underline the suggestion that he must have been crazy to have done what he did.
Hernandez, now 18-years-old, was 14 at the time of the alleged murder. He faces life in prison if convicted of the 2004 killing of Gough in the bathroom of the school. Gough was stabbed more than 40 times.
Miami-Dade assistant state attorney Carin Kahgan said in her opening statement that Hernandez killed Gough as part of a plan to become a serial killer. She described how he committed the crime and then went to his first period class.
''His life was literally ebbing away with the blood that was cascading from him onto the bathroom floor,'' she said during a brief opening statement. ``Until he died. Alone.''
Hernandez has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity.
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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