Jerry Burns sits with his defense attorney during this week's sentencing phase in a Duval County courtroom. | News4Jax
Published on December 17, 2024 at 4:14 pm
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A jury on Tuesday recommended life in prison for a Jacksonville man found guilty of his wife’s murder-for-hire slaying.
Jerry Burns, 55, has been found guilty Friday of first-degree murder for plotting the death of his wife, Velvet, in 2019.
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The State Attorney’s Office said Burns worked with his mistress, Amanda Love, to hire someone to murder his wife, who was stabbed 39 times at her home on the Westside on May 9, 2019.
The jury recommended the life sentence after only a few hours of deliberations Tuesday.
The Burns’ children were among the people who testified during a two-day sentencing hearing. Their son called his mother “a beautiful person inside and out” and said her murder hurt the family.
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Prosecutor Alan Mizrahi pushed for the death penalty, telling the jury that Burns wanted his wife killed in her home.
“Not at some red light, not in some drive-by — in the bed where their children were conceived. He wanted her to take her last breath,” Mizrahi said. “The wholeness of Velvet being in her bed, in her nightclothes — that is a cold murder.”
The jury’s decision was 10 to 2 in favor of life in prison, the State Attorney’s Office said.
Love and co-defendant Stephen Hand have already been sentenced in the case.
Hand pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to life in prison in 2022. Love was sentenced to 40 years in prison in April, also for second degree murder,
