Renfro's fate goes to jury

COEUR d’ALENE — After a day fraught with emotional testimony and before the jury retired to decide if he should be sentenced to death for murdering Coeur d’Alene Police Sgt. Greg Moore, Jonathan Renfro addressed the court.

After listening for six weeks in silence as attorneys and witnesses scrutinized his upbringing, his family and his prison experiences, after experts parsed his personality, sifted through his abnormalities, or his lack thereof, flashed digital slices of his brain on a screen and expounded on its deformities or its perfection, Renfro stood in front of the family of the man he killed and apologized.

“I know you hate me,” he said. “And you probably don’t believe me, but I am sorry.”

Wearing a dark suit and tie as he has since proceedings in Courtroom 1 of the old Kootenai County Courthouse began in September, Renfro told Moore’s family members who had wept earlier as they read victim impact statements, that killing their son, their husband and father was his fault alone.

“I took the life of a man much greater than I am,” he said.

If he spends the rest of his life in prison, he said, the memory of Moore’s death and its consequences will haunt him.

“It’s a horrible thing I will live with the rest of my life,” he said. “I will never be at peace.”

He turned to his mother.

“I wish I could have been a better person, a better son,” he said, showing emotion for the first time in the proceedings.

If the jury chose the death penalty, he told jurors, that would be OK.

“I don’t want to die, but I will accept that decision,” he said.

He explained briefly, his anger, how he had been incarcerated much of his life since moving to Idaho as a teenager, how he attempted to change by attending rehabilitation in juvenile corrections and later, in prison. Any class that was offered, he enrolled, but something always came between him and the lessons that could change his life for the better, he said.

He had only been out of prison for eight months before killing Moore.

At first, he blamed others for the killing, he said. It wasn’t something he would have done. He took his anger out on jailers and inmates, but he knew now, he said.

“It’s nobody’s fault but my own,” he said. “I not only destroyed your family, but I destroyed my family.”

In a courtroom packed with family members and friends on both sides of the aisle, as well as attorneys, police and the media, Moore’s nearest relatives - the victims - told stories about the father, son and husband they loved and dearly missed.

Dylon, Moore’s 16-year-old son explained how his dad had been his life’s foundation. After his dad’s death, he changed schools. His dad would pick him up from his old school and spend afternoons helping his with homework.

He transferred to a school that was less challenging because he knew his dad wouldn’t be there to help with assignments. He moved out of the house where he lived with his stepmother and Moore because the burden of living in the house without his dad was too great. And he didn’t spend time with his grandparents in the home where Moore grew up as a kid. Too many memories. Too much hurt, he said.

Parents, Sherri and Fred, recounted moments with their son. He introduced Fred, a retired police captain, to golf.

“He was worried about me,” Fred said. “I worked all the time.”

The inspiration worked. Fred bought clubs, a golf cart, a membership.

“He was always thinking of others,” he said.

Sherri Moore recounted her son’s affection and enthusiasm. As a boy she dropped him off at school and told him he could have any kind of day he wanted. It was up to him.

“He usually had a good day,” she said.

Wife Lindy cried recounting how her and Moore’s daughter is growing up without a father, how her daughter asks about dad, and wants to know why and how he died. She draws pictures for her father, leaving them at his gravesite.

She lost her best friend, Lindy Moore said, but the death cut across an entire quilt of lives that no thread can mend.

Time doesn’t heal, she said.

“Death changes everything.”

Before releasing jurors around 4:30 p.m. Friday First District Lansing Haynes instructed them that if they could not reach a verdict Friday, they must return today, but there would be no deliberations Sunday.

After eight weeks of proceedings and six weeks of hearing court testimony, the 12-member panel will be sequestered until rendering a verdict.