High-Profile Federal Death-Penalty Trial of Brendt Christensen Ends in Life Sentence

In a high­ly pub­li­cized death-penal­ty tri­al, Brendt Christensen (pic­tured) was sen­tenced to life in prison with­out parole on July 18, 2019 for the rape and mur­der of Chinese grad­u­ate stu­dent Yingying Zhang when a fed­er­al jury in Peoria, Illinois did not reach a unan­i­mous deci­sion on what sen­tence was appro­pri­ate for his crime. The tri­al attract­ed broad nation­al and inter­na­tion­al atten­tion as a result of the sen­sa­tion­al cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the mur­der, Ms. Zhang’s sta­tus as an inter­na­tion­al stu­dent, the fact that her body has nev­er been recov­ered, and U.S. pros­e­cu­tors’ deci­sion to pur­sue the death penal­ty though the crime occurred in a state that had abol­ished capital punishment.

A lawyer for Ms. Zhang’s fam­i­ly ini­tial­ly stat­ed that the fam­i­ly was ​“dev­as­tat­ed” by the life sen­tence. But lat­er, Zhang’s father, speak­ing on behalf of her fam­i­ly, thanked the jury, law enforce­ment, pros­e­cu­tors, and the judge for their work on the case and tri­al. He empha­sized the family’s desire to find Zhang’s remains and bring them back to China. ​“Our goal is, and has always been, to bring Yingying home,” he said. He not­ed that the fam­i­ly would have pre­ferred a death sen­tence, but said, ​“we accept that he will spend the rest of his life in prison, which still reflects our loss in a meaningful way.” 

The case was full of dra­mat­ic moments and unusu­al strate­gic choic­es. During open­ing argu­ments, Christensen’s defense attor­neys con­ced­ed his guilt. Prosecutors played audio of him admit­ting to the crime to his girl­friend, who was secret­ly work­ing with the FBI and wear­ing a wire. The jury con­vict­ed him after 90 min­utes of delib­er­a­tion. The court had crit­i­cized defense coun­sel pri­or to tri­al for delays in obtain­ing the assis­tance of a men­tal health expert, and, ulti­mate­ly, Christensen’s lawyers chose to aban­don a men­tal health penal­ty-phase defense to avoid expos­ing him to a men­tal health eval­u­a­tion by pros­e­cu­tion experts. As a result, the court barred Christensen from argu­ing how pos­si­ble men­tal ill­ness may have affect­ed his con­duct at the time of the crime. Nonetheless, Christensen’s attor­neys pre­sent­ed 49 mit­i­gat­ing fac­tors dur­ing the penal­ty phase of tri­al to per­suade the jury to vote for life. They described his mother’s alco­hol abuse and depres­sion dur­ing his child­hood, his pri­or his­to­ry of men­tal ill­ness, and the fact that he told coun­selors that he was hav­ing homi­ci­dal thoughts before he killed Zhang. Following emo­tion­al­ly charged video­taped vic­tim-impact tes­ti­mo­ny pre­sent­ed by the pros­e­cu­tion, the defense pre­sent­ed its own high­ly emo­tion­al tes­ti­mo­ny from Christensen’s par­ents, who asked the jury to spare their son. Federal defend­er Elisabeth Pollock explained, ​“Our job is to present the whole pic­ture (of Christensen).” 

A com­men­tary by Rob Warden of Injustice Watch crit­i­cized the deci­sion to try the case fed­er­al­ly, which he argued was only done in order to seek the death penal­ty in the abo­li­tion­ist state of Illinois. ​“The out­come shows how ill-advised it was for fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors to usurp state juris­dic­tion in a case where there was no com­pelling fed­er­al inter­est,” he wrote. He not­ed that there is one fed­er­al death-row pris­on­er from Illinois, Ronald Mikos, who was sen­tenced to death in 2005, ​“but in his case, at least, there was a clear fed­er­al inter­est.” Imposing a life sen­tence, rather than death, on Christensen, ​“will save the tax­pay­ers hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars, if not mil­lions, that it would have cost as appeals of a death sen­tence in his case mean­dered through the courts for years.”