Page 4 - Christopher Patrick Sutton News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

John and melissa sutton took their seats in the front row. >> bring in the jury, please. >> reporter: christopher sutton stood stoned faced as jurors streamed in. were those tears from some members of the jury. >> ladies and gentlemen, i understand you have reached a verdict. >> reporter: judge stanford blake read the verdict. state of florida versus christopher sutton, we the jury in miami-dade, florida, find the defendant christopher patrick sutton, as to count one, guilty of first degree murder as charged in the indictment. >> reporter: guilty. with that christopher's head snapped back as i...

And john sutton got busy. he had a mission, two, in fact. one to seek justice no matter what that might mean for his son. and the other, perhaps even more impossible, to simply see again. coming up -- garrett kopp avenue confession should be enough to put him behind bars. but did prosecutors have enough to convict christopher sutton? >> this was a circumstantial case, extremely circumstantial. >> reporter: when "dateline" continues.

>> i want to flip this tragedy, this catastrophe into a positive. >> reporter: meanwhile in miami it was decision time. the alleged shooter, garrett kopp, had finally agreed to plead guilty and testify against sutton's son christopher. in exchange for a 30-year sentence and no death penalty. sutton confronted the killer the day he entered a plea. >> during the next days, months, years, 20 years, 30 years, i want you to think about what you planned and what you did that night, you can be assured that with my blindness, every minute of every day, that i will not forget you. >> all rise, please. ...

>> reporter: what did it say? >> well it talked about killing us for insurance. >> reporter: a week after a warrant was taken out for his arrest, police found christopher and brought him to the miami-dade homicide bur rope. there he learned that both his alleged co-conspirator, garrett kopp and fiancee jewel yet driscoll implicated him. >> i showed him certain excerpts out of juliet driscoll's statement. he began to sob, put his head on the table and said i'm [ bleep ]. but did that mean he was guilty? or merely that he understood the police believed he was guilty? >> he made comments like, th...

Cell in the county jail had produced a doughy christopher sutton by the time his trial finally began. it was july 2010. the son charged with hiring the hit man who murdered his mother, blinded his father. and here he sat apparently confident, highly prepared, ignoring most of the time the surviving members of his family, a scant to feet away. >> you know, we locked eyes, but -- i have nothing to say to him. >> reporter: melissa sat with her father, their father. front row seat. prosecutor karen keagan told the jury a horror story. the state's version of what happened. >> the man for whom the g...