HOUSTON (AP) – A jury is deciding how to sentence a man in the strangulation death of another man outside a Houston-area restaurant.
Jurors got the case Wednesday morning after closing arguments in the punishment phase of Terry Thompson’s trial.
Prosecutors asked jurors to sentence Thompson to life in prison for the killing 24-year-old John Hernandez in May 2017.
Thompson’s defense attorney asked jurors to find he acted in sudden passion and was unable to control his anger – making him eligible for a lesser sentence of two years to 20 years.
The jury convicted Thompson of murder on Monday.
Thompson and his wife, former Harris County sheriff’s deputy Chauna Thompson, confronted Hernandez after seeing him urinating in the parking lot of a Denny’s restaurant.
Chauna Thompson faces a murder trial in April.
