The same jury who found Jorge Banda guilty of first degree murder, came back today with another verdict on Thursday. It only took the jury twenty minutes to find Banda legally sane at the time of the crime.
Cameras were not allowed inside the courtroom for the sanity phase of Jorge Banda's murder trial. The jury was presented with evidence starting Tuesday to determine whether the man they convicted of killing a Tulare County Sheriff Detective was sane at the time of the murder in 2007.
"The two court appointed doctors found he was sane at the time, there was one defense doctor who stated he was insane at the time," said Tulare County Deputy District Attorney Shani Jenkins.
The jury started Thursday afternoon, and it took them just twenty minutes to reach the verdict that Banda was legally sane.
"No amount of decisions or verdicts will bring him back and replace him in our lives," said Kent Haws' mother Wanda Broesder who has sat through the murder trial since it started in early August. "It brought a lot of memories from the day I got the called that he had been killed. Those were back in my heart my mind."
She says she got much joy when the jury found Banda guilty of murdering her son, as well as finding him sane, but it doesn't bring any closure.
"If you had the chance to say something to Jorge Banda, what would you say?"
"I want to know why -- not just because he's bored, or because he didn't want to know to jail -- just why. And I'd want him to know all the pain he's caused our family. Pain that can't be erased."
Broesder says she can forgive Banda for what he did and will try to move on with her life now. "I hope he can forgive himself at some point, if he has that conscious. I don't know that he does."
Banda will be sentenced on October 18th and faces life in prison without the possibility of parole.
