The jury last week convicted 24-year-old Derrick Powell of Cumberland, Md., in the 2009 shooting of 29-year-old Chad Spicer. He was shot as he sat in a police cruiser following the pursuit of a car carrying Powell and two other men. The pursuit began after Powell shot at a drug dealer he was trying to rob.
Prosecutors told the jury Monday that Powell deserves the death penalty because he killed Spicer while fleeing an attempted robbery and trying to avoid arrest.
But Powell's defense says he's the product of a dysfunctional family and endured a childhood so bad that he was expelled from kindergarten.
