Jury deliberating in death penalty trial for man accused in Wake County double murder
RALEIGH (WTVD) -- A jury found a
The jury is deliberating in the death penalty trial of Seaga Gillard, one of the men accused in a double murder case in Wake County.
The case was handed over to the jury after closing arguments on Tuesday.
Gillard was charged, along with Xavier Hill, with first-degree murder in the deaths of April Lynn Holland, who was pregnant, and Dwayne Garvey.
Police said the pair was gunned down in a room at the Best Value Inn in Raleigh's Crabtree Valley in December 2016.
The crime was caught on a surveillance camera.
On Feb. 11, Prosecutor David Saacks told jurors Holland was a prostitute and was at the hotel turning tricks. He said Garvey was her partner in selling sex.
WATCH: Prosecutor makes opening statement
Witnesses then took the stand.
The defense argues that the surveillance video is blurry and the jurors can't be sure Gillard was the person in the video. They also argued that the people shown in the video that day didn't intend on killing anyone.
"At the end of the day, it was chaotic, it was random, I submit it was tragic, but it was not first-degree murder," Gillard's attorney Edd Roberts said.
The prosecutors, on the other hand, told the jurors, "to tell you it wasn't him insults your intelligence."
"What I have to show to you is that at some point in the second, the millisecond before he pulls that trigger he thought about it, he intended it and he followed through with it. That's what I have to prove," Prosecutor Katy Pomeroy said.
Jurors can find Gillard guilty of first-degree murder, guilty of second-degree murder or not guilty.
The case is catching the eyes of locals since death penalty trials are rare in North Carolina.
The Center for Death Penalty Litigation has criticized Wake County for continuing to seek the death penalty even though juries in the county repeatedly reject it.
Video above is from a previous version of this story.
