---
title: 'News Brief — Four Penalty Phases in Conclude in One Week, With Three Life Sentences and One Death Recommendation.'
description: 'NEWS (2/10/20): Jurors reached penalty-phase verdicts in four cases during the week of February 4–10, 2020, returning three life verdicts and one death…'
canonical: 'https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/news-developments-four-penalty-phases-in-conclude-in-one-week-with-three-life-sentences-and-one-death-recommendation'
section: news
date: '2020-02-09T11:20:00-05:00'
updated: '2025-03-14T15:03:57-04:00'
source: 'Death Penalty Information Center'
---

**NEWS (2/10/20):** Jurors reached penalty-phase verdicts in four cases during the week of February 4–10, 2020, returning three life verdicts and one death sentence.

On February 4, **Jamaal Smith** was sentenced to life without parole in a **Florida** triple murder on February 4 after a **Polk County** jury reached a non-unanimous sentencing recommendation. A co-defendant, Johnathan Alcegaire, was sentenced to death in a separate trial in 2019.

On February 7, **Donald Hartung** received a life sentence in **Pensacola**, Florida in a different triple murder, also as a result of a non-unanimous jury vote at sentencing. Hartung's lawyers had presented evidence that the 63-year-old defendant was suffering from dementia at the time of the murders caused by damage to the frontal and temporal lobes of his brain.

Later in the day, a **Clark County, Nevada** jury sentenced **Ray Charles Brown** to life in the 2016 murder of a Las Vegas liquor store clerk during an attempted robbery. Two co-defendants in the murder pled guilty and were sentenced to terms of years.

In a rare Sunday verdict, jurors from **Rapides Parish**, **Louisiana** sentenced **Kyle Joekel** to death for the murders of two **St. John Parish** sheriff's deputies in 2010. Prosecutors said Joekel was a member of the “sovereign citizens” movement, an anti-government group that ambushed the deputies in a trailer park. Jurors were selected from Rapides Parish because the publicity in St. John Parish about the highly emotional case made it impossible to select a jury from the parish. A formal sentencing date has not yet been set.