HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) — A.J. Armstrong walked out of court Monday surrounded by his grandmothers, girlfriend, family, and friends, as jurors have yet to reach a verdict after their first day of deliberation.
Closing arguments lasted more than three hours.
After closing arguments, jurors went directly into deliberations. Jurors were previously told to pack a bag; in the case, they would be sequestered for the evening if they couldn’t agree on a verdict before the day’s end.
Prosecutors began by talking about the importance of the Armstrong home security system, citing the alarm records prove the killer had to have come from inside the Armstrong home.
“It makes no sense someone outside the household would bust into the house with the alarm on, peruse the house, find the homeowner’s gun, shoot the homeowner, go downstairs, write a note, (and) lock up the house. It just doesn’t make sense,” prosecutor Ryan Trask told jurors.
Trask held up a poster outlining A.J.’s cell phone activity on the morning of the murder, July 29, 2016. The records show that A.J.’s cell phone activity stopped at 1:02 a.m.
“The only time (A.J.) was not on his phone was in the 38-minute window when his parents were getting murdered,” Trask said.
At 1:09 a.m., the second-floor motion detector went off on the same floor where Dawn and Antonio Sr. slept.
A.J.’s bedroom was located on the third floor. According to the alarm records, the first-floor living room motion sensor was activated at 1:25 a.m.
A.J. called 911 himself at 1:40 a.m.But A.J.’s attorneys showed jurors the ADT house alarm records had errors 77 times in the three weeks leading up to the murders.
“The alarm records are that-garbage. They are garbage,” defense attorney Chris Collings said while throwing stacks of alarm records into a trash can for dramatic effect. “How many errors? How many mistakes? How many false reports do you have to have? A.J. deserves to have his future decided on something more than records that are garbage.”
Both prosecutors and defense attorneys revisited the text messages between A.J. and his parents.
“The reason we showed you those text messages was so you could see what the victims thought of (A.J.),” Trask said to the jurors.
Over the last three weeks, jurors were shown dozens of texts between A.J. and his parents, which show Dawn and Antonio Sr. frustrated with their son over failing grades, lying about being out with his girlfriend, and smoking in the house.
“He was engaging in extremely disruptive behavior, and he did it with a smile on his face,” Trask said, talking about the weeks leading up to the murders.
“Throughout all those texts, when his mom and dad are getting on him about all the stuff that’s going on, does he ever get angry? No,” A.J.’s attorney, Rick DeToto, told jurors. “Please go through all of (the text messages). Not just the bad ones.”
Thousands of pages of text message records were introduced into evidence.
DeToto said the same text message records prove A.J. is not a cold-blooded killer because, minutes before the murders, he was texting with his girlfriend.
“A.J. was having kissy faces with his girlfriend. He’s texting her, ‘I love you’ and ‘I miss you.’ Is that the state of mind of a killer?” DeToto said.
DeToto told jurors Houston police made up their minds within 11 minutes of being on the murder scene, that A.J. was the killer without investigating anyone else.
“There was no gunshot residue, no blood, no fingerprints, no DNA, no nothing. So, as that disease spread through the homicide investigators, it started to shape how they looked at this case,” DeToto said.
The defense has long said A.J.’s older half-brother, Josh, could have been the killer.
Josh had dropped out of college and was living back in Houston, at an apartment near his parent’s house on Palmetto. According to A.J.’s cell phone records, Josh was the first person he called after calling 911. Josh showed up at the murder scene minutes later.
Josh suffered a psychotic breakdown in the years after his parents’ murders.
“We are not trying to stigmatize Josh. I feel sorry for that young man. The allegations by the District Attorney’s Office that we’re picking on him for his mental illness. No way,” DeToto said.
“What kind of desperate Hail Mary attempt is this? They have totally missed the mark in understanding mental illness and how it played in this case,” Trask told jurors.
Hundreds of pages of Josh Armstrong’s medical records were given to the jury during to look over deliberation.
Josh suffered a psychotic breakdown, and medical experts from both the defense and prosecution testified during the trial. A.J.’s attorneys argued he was starting to spiral before the murders-and that could have led to killing Dawn and Antonio Sr.
But prosecutors say it’s clear Josh became severely mentally ill because of the traumatic event of living through his parents’ murders.
“There were no signs of mental illness before the murders,” Jordan said to the jury. “Let me say that again. There were no signs to anyone of mental illness before these murders.”
While both sides fought to make their case, A.J. sat with his head down, writing on a yellow legal pad. He did not show emotion, and remained calm, as he did for most of the trial.
DeToto ended his arguments by standing in front of the jury box, motioning across the room towards A.J. “He’s in your hands now,” DeToto said. “You have a very important decision to make. Give him back to us. Give him back to his family.”
Jordan was the address of the jury. He put a text message from Dawn to A.J. on the projector for the court to read.
“I know you left. The alarm doesn’t lie. You lied. I can show you,” read the text from Dawn to her son. Jordan said it was sent in the days leading up to her murder.
“How appropriate that six years later, the last words of this trial would come from Dawn Armstrong. The woman who believed in justice and holding her son accountable,” said Jordan. “There are no words I can say. No phrases I can use that are more powerful, more appropriate, or more damning than that text message.”
Jurors in the re-trial heard testimony from 24 witnesses over the course of fewer than two weeks.
A.J.’s defense team rested their case Friday after calling four witnesses, including A.J.’s only family member to testify on his behalf — his younger sister, Kayra Armstrong.
She was also in the house the night their parents, Dawn and Antonio Armstrong Sr. were shot to death in 2016. She was 12 years old at the time.
Armstrong was 16 years old when he was charged with capital murder.
Kayra has grown up under the lens of this case. She was calm, collected, and not emotional as she recounted the details of that evening.
Kayra told jurors that A.J. had picked her up from her grandmother’s house and when they got home, the two went up to Dawn and Antonio Sr.’s bedroom and the four of them talked. Kayra said she eventually set the alarm and said goodnight to her parents, and the next thing she remembered was A.J. shaking her awake, saying they had to get out of the house.
Kayra also testified that the house alarm had been finicky in the past, though she had no issue setting the alarm that night.
Kayra told jurors that A.J. had a great relationship with their parents. She said Josh, their older half-brother, also loved and respected their parents.
Though, Kayra said Josh had changed in the weeks leading up to the murders. She says she heard him talking to himself in the bathroom, that his personal hygiene had declined, and that Josh smoked weed more often.
Kayra testified that a few weeks before her parents were killed, Josh got into a fight with Dawn and Antonio Sr., yelling at one point: “I’m the black sheep of the family. You love A.J. and Kayra more than me.”
The state’s final witness, Dr. Ian Lamoureux, a forensic psychiatrist, testified that after reviewing hundreds of pages of Josh’s medical records, it appeared Josh became full-on schizophrenic after the murders. Lamoureux testified that the traumatic event seemed to have caused Josh’s psychotic breakdown.
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“Well, the distinction between their expert and ours was our expert spoke with (Armstrong) family members, and those family members expressed this (Josh’s mental decline) has been going on for a while,” Rick DeToto, A.J.’s attorney, said.
“(A.J.) is nervous. Just to be frank,” Chris Collings, A.J.’s other attorney, said. “He was feeling pretty good throughout the trial. We’ve been through this before, then, all of the sudden, the reality that it’s winding down and coming to a close has hit him.”
“This has been a burden on my shoulder for six years. I feel like A.J. is one of my stepsons, and I have a heavy responsibility for this young man,” DeToto said.
