By Shayna Jacobs
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
MANHATTAN SUPREME COURT — An ex-con who said he was assisting in the suicide of a distressed Long Island man who wanted to die so his family could collect on a massive life insurance payout was found guilty of murder by a Manhattan jury on Thursday.
The jury decided that Jeffrey Locker's death was not an assisted suicide under New York State law even though no one — on either side of the case — disputed that he was trying to die.
This was no Jack Kevorkian-style mercy killing, it was an intentional murder by defendant Kenneth Minor, prosecutors argued.
Minor was not "an angel of mercy" but "the grim reaper...who took money to kill another person and if anything he's an accomplice to the insurance fraud," Assistant District Attorney Peter Casolaro said in closing arguments Wednesday.
Minor had admitted to holding a sharp blade steady against the steering wheel of Locker's car and claimed that the desperate man had hurled his torso onto the knife.
The 52-year-old was stabbed in the chest at least six times and was left to bleed to death in the driver's seat of his SUV about 4 a.m. on July 16, 2009. He remained there until a local firefighter discovered him, dead, bound and bruised on Paladino Avenue in East Harlem.
Minor used Locker's ATM card at several locations in the neighborhood. He said he received the debit card as compensation for his assistance in Locker's death.
Minor's death had to appear unintentional in order for his family to get an $18 million insurance payout, so he cruised around troubled Upper Manhattan neighborhoods looking for an aide who would help him make his death look like a murder-robbery, according to the testimony at Locker's three-week trial in Manhattan Supreme Court.
Most of the insurance claims were contested after his death, though his family received $6 million from older policies.
Despite the victim's well-documented death wish, Minor's obvious participation in the killing was still a second-degree murder, prosecutors said.
Lockers wife and three children were not present throughout any of the trial and some of the evidence suggested that they may have known what Locker was up to.
Had the jury found during its five hours of deliberation that Locker's death was an assisted suicide, Minor would not have been convicted of murder. He would likely have been convicted of manslaughter instead, a conviction that would have carried five to 15 years in prison instead of a maximum of life behind bars.
Minor's lawyer, Daniel Gotlin, blamed the verdict on the definition of assisted suicide Judge Carol Berkman gave jurors. The judge told the jury the stabbing could not be treated as an assisted suicide if "the defendant actively caused Jeffrey Locker's death, even with Locker's consent."
That instruction, Gotlin argued, is a false interpretation of the law, which actually defines a suicide assistant as someone who "causes or aids" in the voluntary death of another person.
Shortly before handing down the verdict, the jury sent a note to the judge indicating some confusion over the "affirmative defense" provision.
"We have reached a verdict. We are unclear about the procedure for affirmative defense," the note read. However, they returned a guilty verdict shortly afterward.
The jury did not speak to reporters as they were leaving the courthouse, but two alternate jurors who were relieved from the case on Thursday before deliberations began also said they would have convicted Minor of murder.
"I can't feel bad for anybody in this case," said alternate juror Will Schoenmaker, who said the alleged victim, Jeffrey Locker, was also an unsympathetic party.
He said his apparent plan to plot is own death in exchange for a massive life insurance payout to his family was difficult to sympathize with.
"It's sad everything was brought to this point," the Financial District resident added.
Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance Jr. defended the choice to prosecute this case as a homicide despite ample evidence that Locker was planning his own death.
"This was murder for money, not a mercy killing, which is why we prosecuted the case as an intentional murder," Vance said.
Minor's lawyer Gotlin said this was the first murder conviction in New York where assisted suicide was a defense.
He said he will appeal the conviction based on the judge's jury instruction regarding the definition of assisted suicide.
