Chinese scholar Zhang Yingying’s killer Brendt Christensen ‘leaving in a coffin no matter what’, lawyer says as jury weighs death penalty
- Christensen was found guilty last month of Zhang’s abduction and murder in 2017
- He now faces death sentence or life in prison as prosecution and defence make their closing statements
Federal jurors on Wednesday were deliberating the fate of an Illinois man who was found guilty of the gruesome murder of a Chinese graduate student two years ago, and will decide whether to sentence him to death or life in prison.
Brendt Christensen, 29, was found guilty last month of the abduction and murder of Zhang Yingying, a 26-year-old student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
While the state of Illinois has outlawed capital punishment, it is an option in federal cases under US kidnapping laws. Defence lawyers are seeking a life sentence for Christensen.
During closing arguments on Wednesday, prosecutors described how Christensen, a one-time masters student at the university, took Zhang to his apartment, where she fought for her life as he bludgeoned her with a baseball bat, raped her and stabbed her in the neck before cutting off her head.
“This is the definition of heinous. This is the definition of shockingly evil,” James Nelson, a prosecutor in the US Department of Justice’s capital case division, told the jury.
