The Washington Post is reporting that prosecutors contend that Brittany Norwood is beyond rehabilitation and are asking that she never be set free. She was convicted of murdering a co-worker last year at a popular Bethesda, Md., yoga store and frightening a community with an elaborate hoax about a roving band of masked killers.
Norwood, 29, had persisted in lying to police and her family about being a victim in the attack that left Jayna Murray, 30, dead in a back hallway of the Lululemon Athletica store March 12.
A jury convicted Norwood of first-degree murder in November and she is scheduled to be sentenced Friday in Montgomery County Circuit Court.
Norwood’s expansive and steadfast lies during a week-long coverup — “coupled with her lack of remorse” — speak to the “tremendous danger” Norwood would pose if released, Montgomery County State’s Attorney John McCarthy states in a sentencing memo. He urges that she be imprisoned with no chance of parole.
Murray suffered more than 330 distinct wounds and was alive for each of them, court testimony showed.
After the murder, Norwood arranged the crime scene to support a coverup. She tracked size 14 sneakers through Murray’s blood to make it appear that a large man had attacked them, and then she tied herself up inside the store overnight. An employee arriving for work the next morning found the two women, and Norwood said she and Murray had been attacked and sexually assaulted by masked intruders.
That cunning “is evil” and Norwood is “a pathological liar,” the prosecution memo says.
“It is the State’s firm belief that this defendant cannot be rehabilitated and will pose a danger to the community should she ever be released from prison,” the prosecution memo says. The murder and the “callous efforts” to avoid responsibility for the killing are “precisely” what life without parole was designed to punish, according to the memo.
No motive was ever established in this horrific killing. In the end, two young lives have essentially been snuffed out over who knows what. We hope that all the families involved find some closure.
Read more at the Washington Post.