Jury returns a verdict of guilty
By John Joyce
Published in News on February 16, 2016 1:46 PM
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James Howard
A Wayne County jury deliberated less than two hours before returning a guilty verdict Monday in the murder trial of James Howard.
Convicted in the 2009 double murder of two Goldsboro hotel workers, Howard will serve two consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole.
"I thought it was a strong case," District Attorney Matthew Delbridge said.
Delbridge prosecuted the case against Howard, a task he said was made more difficult in some ways due to the fact that Howard represented himself.
"It's harder because you can't anticipate what to expect. You've got an unknown quality to deal with," he said.
DNA evidence and a recovered murder weapon implicated Howard as the killer. Crime scene photos and forensics experts proved insurmountable for Howard as his own counsel.
"This is just -- you talk about a heinous and atrocious act. To get executed in their own home ...," Delbridge said.
The victims, Suryakat and Bahavanaben Patel, were a married couple in their 60s, living and working at the America's Best Value Inn in Goldsboro. Delbridge told jurors early on in the trial the Indian immigrants were working toward their dream of gaining U.S. citizenship. They were known to their co-workers and regular guests as "Mama and Papa Patel," he said.
On Dec. 13, 2009, the Patels were shot and killed in their hotel room, which also served as their home, during a robbery. They were left there, only to be discovered the next day after failing to report for work.
DNA from inside the room, as well as a stolen cell phone which was left on and was therefore able to be tracked, pointed investigators to Howard.
He was arrested 30 days later on unrelated charges at another hotel. Inside that hotel room, police found the murder weapon.
Despite the strong evidence, Delbridge said Howard representing himself posed a real threat to the state's chances at getting a conviction.
"There was a danger he would personalize himself to a jury," Delbridge said. "And that they would fall over backwards (for him) to make sure things were fair."
He said although Howard had no legal training, the advantage was with the defendant because the state presents its case first.
Howard could listen to the state go first, and then fashion a story to contest the scenario that was presented to the jury or poke holes in the state's case, Delbridge said.
And despite his own former attorney, Steven M. Fisher -- who served as "stand-by counsel" during the trial to assist, but not speak for Howard -- saying that his former client had been deemed legally retarded by the state in an earlier proceeding, Delbridge thought Howard did well.
"He did a good job," he said.
Delbridge refuted the retardation factor, too.
"There were several tests designed to keep him from getting the death penalty," he said, conceding that Howard did have a limited IQ.
How much Howard's intelligence factored in to the jury's decision is unclear. The 12-person jury returned guilty verdicts on two counts of first-degree murder, two counts of robbery with a dangerous weapon and a single count of possession of firearm by a convicted felon.
Howard is sentenced to spend the rest of his life in prison with no chance of ever being paroled.
Delbridge said he was satisfied with the jury's decision.