One crime, two juries in bizarre Florida killing

Two teenagers from Florida went on trial yesterday accused of bludgeoning their father to death, four days after a jury in a separate trial, with the same judge, reached a verdict on a family friend accused of the same murder.

Alex and Derek King killed their father, Terry, with an aluminum baseball bat while he slept, the court was told.

Last week Judge Frank Bell presided over a trial at which Alex, 13, and Derek, 14, were prosecutionwitnesses against Ricky Chavis, a 40-year-old handyman. The jury reached a verdict in that case on Friday, but Judge Bell ordered that it remained sealed until the current trial is completed.

Mr Chavis could be called as a prosecution witness in the case against the boys. Judge Bell said: "Is it possible for two different juries to find both of them guilty? Yes. Is it possible for two different juries to find both of them not guilty? Yes. Unusual, very unusual."

Mr King was killed in November while sleeping on a recliner at home in Cantonment, a working-class suburb of the Florida city of Pensacola. The house was later set on fire.

The recorded confessions the boys gave to Escambia County sheriff's deputies a day after their father's death is the strongest evidence against them. "I made sure he was asleep," Derek told investigators. "I got the bat and I hit him over the head." Alex told the deputies it was his idea to kill his father because the boys were afraid of being punished for running away from home. Derek said their father had pushed Alex around earlier and he had started crying.

Both boys said in their statements that Mr Chavis had nothing to do with the killing.

Alex described the murder in detail, telling the deputies he saw his father's brain through a hole in his head and heard "a sound like the person has a slightly stopped up nose" as he took his final breaths.

Mr Chavis's lawyer, Michael Rollo, told the jury in the first trial that such a scene was something the boys could not have made up and was proof they were guilty. "It's like a photograph of a crime scene."

The boys have retracted their confessions and say they were hiding in the boot of Mr Chavis's car while he killed their father. The brothers hoped to live with Mr Chavis – a convicted child molester – who had taken them in when they ran away from home 10 days before the murder.

The trials are being held separately because Mr Chavis was only indicted and charged once a Grand Jury considered the case against him made by the brothers when they retracted their confessions.