File
DALLAS - A Dallas County jury deliberated for less than two hours Friday before convicting Rondel Allen of capital murder in the 2006 death of Patrick Graham.
Allen now stands to receive an automatic life sentence with no opportunity for parole. He was accused of fatally shooting Graham, a drug dealer, and sexually assaulting the man's girlfriend.
During closing arguments earlier Friday, prosecutor David Alex told the jury that Allen and his friend, Royal Cola, went into a North Dallas apartment "to hit a lick and it went bad."
Cola and Nathaniel Allen, Rondel Allen's cousin, both testified against Rondel Allen. Nathaniel Allen said the three - who are all Hurricane Katrina evacuees - planned to rob Graham, but no one was supposed to get hurt or killed.
Defense attorney Catherine Bernhard said no proof was given that her client ever set foot inside Graham's apartment or used a shotgun to rape and sodomize Graham's girlfriend.
Bernhard said there was only the testimony of Graham's girlfriend, who had used heroin and cocaine that night, and Allen's co-defendants. None of that was reliable, she said.
Nathaniel Allen and Cola each face one count of capital murder for their roles in the slaying of Graham, 22. Both men testified against Rondel Allen in exchange for pleading guilty and allowing state District Judge Ernest White to consider their punishment.
The two men said they hope their testimony would encourage the judge to show them leniency.
