Let us not forget the victim, 15-year-old Alexus
Postorino who was murdered by Norman Belcher on December 6, 2010. Thank God he
was sentenced to death.
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Alexus Postorino (left) and Norman Belcher
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Posted December 15, 2016 - 7:48pmUpdated December 16, 2016 - 9:41am
Las Vegas man
who killed teen girl gets death penalty
By DAVID
FERRARA
LAS VEGAS
REVIEW-JOURNAL
A Las Vegas
man should be executed for shooting and killing 15-year-old Alexus Postorino
inside her home, a jury decided Thursday.
It was the
sentence 41-year-old Norman Belcher asked for.
Just before
being convicted of first-degree murder a day earlier, Belcher, a longtime
felon, told District Judge Elissa Cadish he was “fine with the death penalty.”
Prosecutors
said Belcher shot Alexus, the daughter of a man he thought shut him out of an
illicit drug trade, four times at close range while she was in her father’s
bedroom.
Belcher said he
preferred a solitary life on death row to being housed with other inmates in
the general population of a prison.
“We gave him
something he wanted, but we felt he deserved it,” jury foreman Jason Platner
said. “He might outlive it, and so be it, but he can’t hurt anybody else in the
meantime.”
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Alexus Monique Postorino
(September 27, 1995 to December 7, 2010)
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Belcher
refused to show up to court Thursday, instead sitting in jail while his
attorneys argued for a sentence of life in prison. Had Belcher attended, he
would have heard emotional testimony by Alexus’s friends and family, which
brought tears to the eyes of jurors and prosecutors alike.
Alisiana
Brooks had hoped to confront the killer of her “god sister,” a girl she
described as a weekend rollerskating partner and sidekick in mall shenanigans.
“I
wanted to address Norman Belcher,” Brooks said. “I wanted to let him know how he changed my life. And he’s a
coward.”
An
image of Alexus flashed on a large monitor facing the jury. Even as a young
girl, she dreamed of becoming a lawyer so she could make a difference in the
world around her, Brooks told jurors.
“She was
better than this,” Brooks said. “She shouldn’t have her face up on this screen.
We were raised in a certain lifestyle, but we were determined to be better than
what happened.”
Alexus lay
dying as Belcher stood over her and fired perhaps the last of four shots into
the girl’s body, according to trial testimony. Two of her wounds were from
gunshots fired at close range into her chest.
Prosecutors
alleged that Belcher, also known as Norman Bates, broke into the Postorino home
in December 2010 because of a drug-related dispute with the girl’s father, who
was at a casino at the time of the killing.
In the days
before Alexus was gunned down, Belcher sent threatening text messages to
William Postorino, whom he thought owed him $450 for forged drug prescriptions.
“I’m actually
hoping that you don’t pay me, because I then feel like I’m following protocol,”
Belcher wrote in one message. “So 450 or war. An element of surprise.”
Another man
who was inside the home, Nicholas Brabham, testified at the start of trial that
he recognized Belcher after he burst into the home.
Throughout
trial, Belcher’s lawyers suggested that William Postorino’s involvement in
illicit drugs meant that anyone could have been out to rob him.
Outside
court, after jurors delivered the sentence, defense attorney Robert Draskovich
pointed to years of possible appeals guaranteed to Belcher because of the death
penalty.
“They’ve now
guaranteed decades of litigation and more strict scrutiny of the verdict.
Norman Belcher knew this. And the state knew this. … He knew he’d have better
housing conditions, and he’d have mandatory appeals paid for by the state. Both
he and the state of Nevada were complicit in furthering the litigation of this
matter.”
Chief Deputy
District Attorney Giancarlo Pesci disputed the comments.
“The
idea that a life without (sentence) ends the process is just not accurate and
that’s a misguided approach,” the prosecutor said. “It’s
not true that a life without sentence ends the appellate process.”
Contact David
Ferrara at dferrara@reviewjournal.com
or 702-380-1039. Follow @randompoker on Twitter.
INTERNET SOURCE: http://www.reviewjournal.com/crime/courts/las-vegas-man-who-killed-teen-girl-gets-death-penalty
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