Locker killer guilty plea rejected

The killer of North Woodmere motivational speaker Jeffrey Locker had a Manhattan state court judge refuse his guilty plea to manslaughter on April 8.

Kenneth Minor had his 2011 murder conviction overturned based on improper jury instructions on the assisting suicide defense. In February, he turned down a plea deal that would have shortened his original 20-years to life sentence to 14 years. He has been in jail for the past five years.

Indicted by the District Attorney’s office for both murder — a maximum sentence of life in prison — and manslaughter — a maximum sentence of 7 ½ to 15 year, Minor and his attorney, Daniel Gotlin, were told by State Supreme Court Justice Laura Ward said she would not permit a plea to manslaughter as it might then be used to block a trial on the murder charge in what could be a violation of the Constitution’s double jeopardy ban.

A guilty plea to one count of a consolidated indictment can’t be accepted, Ward said.

Minor told police that Locker wanted to escape from his financial problems and sought to have the “suicide” look like a murder. Minor said that Locker promised him his ATM card in exchange for killing him. Locker was found dead in an East Harlem housing project, tied up and with multiple stab wounds to his abdomen on July 16, 2009.

In New York, “causing or aiding” a suicide is second-degree manslaughter and could be used as a defense to a murder charge.

However, Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance has said that since Locker hired Minor it’s not the type of “mercy killing” the assisted suicide law was created for. Negotiations between Gotlin and prosecutors are continuing.

Locker was shown during the initial trial to be in substantial debt, and shortly before he was killed had purchased a $12 million life insurance policy and had a total of $18 million in life insurance. Neither policy would pay out for suicide.