An Arizona man was convicted Thursday for a 1991 Phoenix Buddhist temple massacre that killed six monks.
The conviction of 39-year-old Johnathan Doody came after a month-long trial. Maricopa County Superior Court jury found him guilty on nine counts of first-degree murder, nine counts of armed robbery and one count each of burglary and conspiracy, reported Reuters.
In 2011, an appeals court overturned the conviction of Doody, stating that investigators did not obtain his confession properly, reported The Washington Post. This was followed by a fresh trial that ended in a mistrial last October 2013, after the jury reached a deadlock.
Two other men got life sentences for the killings. The Phoenix Buddhist temple slayings at the Wat Promkunaram temple in Waddell are known to be the most brutal in the history of Arizona.
Allesandro 'Alex' Garcia one of the two men who was sentenced to life testified against Doody during the retrials. He said killing the people inside the temple was Doody's idea after they had robbed the monks of $2,600 cash and valuables. Garcia also said that he tried stopping Doody from killing but he was adamant and wanted to leave no witnesses behind, reported the Post.
Garcia pleaded guilty to nine counts of first-degree murder in 1993 and was sentenced to 271 years in prison
The same jurors from the previous trial found evidence that made Doody eligible for a longer prison sentence. However, he cannot be given the death sentence as he was 17 at the time of the killings.
"Today's verdict confirms that the passage of time has not obscured the guilt of this defendant, nor has it diminished our commitment to seek justice for the nine innocent victims whose lives were senselessly taken," Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery said following the verdict, Reuters reported. "We now look forward to the imposition of an appropriate sentence that will hold him accountable for this horrible crime," he said.
On August 10, 1991, police found the bodies of six monks, a novice, a nun and a temple boy face down in a circle, each killed by a gunshot to the head, according to Reuters.
Police suspected Doody and Garcia after they found a .22-caliber semiautomatic rifle owned by a friend. The authorities later identified it as the murder weapon.
