Thread: Second AZ border activist sentenced to death

Second Arizona border activist sentenced to death
Apr. 6, 2011 11:47 AM
Associated Press
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TUCSON - A jury in Tucson has sentenced a second border activist to death in the killings of an Arivaca man and his young daughter in May 2009.

A supervisor in the Pima County Attorney's Office says 36-year-old Jason Bush was sentenced to die Wednesday by lethal injection for the killings of 29-year-old Raul Junior Flores and his 9-year-old daughter Brisenia Flores.

The Washington state man was convicted March 25 of two counts of first-degree murder. Prosecutors alleged that he and two others dressed as law enforcement officers forced their way into the victims' home.

The Arizona Daily Star reports Bush was part of Minutemen American Defense founder Shawna Forde's plan to rob and kill drug smugglers to fund her organization.

The 43-year-old Forde was convicted and sentenced to death in February.

Read more: http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/ ... z1Ilv7hZkp

Second border activist sentenced to death in Arivaca double-killing caseBy Kim Smith, Arizona Daily Star | Posted: Wednesday, April 6, 2011 11:15 am

Defense attorney Richard Parrish tried to convince the jurors to spare Jason Bush’s life Tuesday afternoon by questioning the state’s motives, hammering on his client’s mental illness and quoting from both the Old and the New Testaments.

He failed.

The Pima County jury sentenced Bush to die after deliberating nearly four hours over two days. Bush showed no reaction at sentencing this morning.

Bush, 36, was convicted of first-degree murder last month in the May 30, 2009, deaths of Arivaca residents Raul Junior Flores, 29, and his daughter Brisenia Flores, 9.

Bush was part of Minutemen American Defense founder Shawna Forde's plan to rob and kill drug smugglers to fund her organization, prosecutors say. Forde, 43, was convicted and sentenced to death in February.

Bush shot Junior Flores multiple times in the neck and torso and he shot Brisenia Flores twice in the face at point blank range as the girl begged for her life, according to Gina Gonzalez, 32, the sole survivor in the attack that killed her husband and daughter.

Parrish told jurors prosecutors showed gruesome photos of every wound inflicted, not to prove Bush’s guilt, but to get them to hate Bush enough to kill him.

In 1500 BC the Old Testament spoke of an eye for an eye, but the New Testament talks about turning the other cheek, Parrish said.

Prosecutors wanted jurors to go back 3,000 years and “murderâ€