The Associated Press
FORT WORTH, Texas - A parole violator who shot a police officer in the head was spared the death penalty Friday and sentenced to life in prison without parole.
Jurors deliberated about four hours before deciding on life behind bars for Stephen Lance Heard, 41, who was convicted earlier this week of killing Fort Worth police officer Henry “Hank” Nava two years ago.
Nava had gone with other officers to a mobile home looking for Heard, who was wanted for a parole violation and also was suspected in an identity theft ring.
After the sentencing, the widow and mother of his two young children, Teresa Nava, said she thought Heard deserved the death penalty but that she was satisfied with the sentence.
“It puts a little closure on it because we don’t have this trial hanging over our heads,” she said.
During closing arguments Friday morning, defense attorney Mark Daniel appealed to jurors’ emotional side in urging them to spare Heard’s life, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported in its online edition Friday.
“Steven Heard is a human being,” Daniel told the jury. “He has blood in his veins and flesh. He is one of God’s creatures. Ladies and gentleman, this is a human being.”
Daniel said that although Heard is an alcoholic and drug addict, he will not be a danger to society if he is locked up for the rest of his life.
But prosecutors reminded jurors about Heard’s many arrests and chances for rehabilitation. They pointed to numerous letters that Heard had written from jail in which he pledges his allegiance to the Aryan Brotherhood and makes threats to a particular inmate.
“He talks his way into people’s lives and talks his way out of trouble,” prosecutor Betty Arvin told the jury, The Dallas Morning News reported in Friday’s online edition. “Did you hear from one friend who said he’s a good guy, that he has a good heart? No, because he doesn’t have a good heart.”
The option of life without parole in capital murder cases in Texas, the nation’s most active death penalty state, was signed into law in June 2005. It went into effect that September, about three months before Nava was killed.
At the time, many prosecutors opposed the bill when it included keeping the parole option as a third choice for jurors in capital murder cases, but they agreed to support the bill once that was stripped out.
Death penalty opponents said they hoped the provision would result in fewer executions in Texas.