Jury out in murder trial of soldier who pleaded insanity

Robert Hull Marko is a deceptive killer who tried to outsmart thelaw or a delusional soldier who believed he was a savage raptor whenhe cut a young woman's throat and left her to die along a mountainroad.

A jury began weighing those choices at noon Wednesday afterhearing nearly three weeks of testimony in the trial of the 23-year-old Fort Carson soldier.

After five hours of deliberations, the jury recessed without averdict. They will resume work on Thursday.

Marko is accused of first-degree murder and sexual assault in theOct. 10, 2008, death of Judilianna Lawrence, a 19-year-old who hadmet him on the Internet via her MySpace page.

El Paso County sheriff's investigators found her naked body threedays later after Marko led them to an area 2.7 miles up Old StageRoad southwest of Colorado Springs. Marko has pleaded not guilty byreason of insanity.

In closing arguments, Deputy Public Defender Dan King describedhis client as a severely mentally ill man who by age 9 had beendiagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder as the result of anabusive childhood.

King started by reading a passage from Marko's writing in whichhe described himself as "a pure blooded black raptor born as ahuman" and added "I'm becoming a cold-blooded killer."

"This man is Robert Marko," King said standing in front of hisclient. "He's damaged ... and he's dangerous."

But Senior Deputy District Attorney Shannon Gerhart said the webof deception that Marko spun in his various explanations of whathappened show that he knew exactly what he was doing when he rapedLawrence, bound and gagged her, tied her to a tree and slit herthroat.

Gerhart described Marko's claim that he had retreated into adinosaur persona called "Rex 290" at the time of the murder as justanother deception.

"Now it's just convenient to say, 'oh, I thought I was a blackraptor, so I guess that gives me license to kill,'" Gerhart said.

Marko faces a mandatory sentence of life in prison without paroleif the nine-woman, three-man jury finds him guilty of first-degreemurder.

If they find him not guilty by reason of insanity, he faces anindefinite commitment to the Colorado Mental Health Institute inPueblo until authorities decide if he's well enough to release.

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