Jury resumes in researcher’s cyanide murder case
PITTSBURGH (AP) — A jury has begun its second day of deliberations into whether a University of Pittsburgh medical researcher is guilty of first-degree murder in his neurologist wife’s death last year.
The jury in 66-year-old Dr. Robert Ferrante’s trial returned about 9 a.m. Friday.
They deliberated about six hours Thursday before an Allegheny County judge sent them to dinner and to a downtown hotel, where they’re being sequestered when they’re not in the courthouse.
Prosecutors contend Ferrante laced Dr. Autumn Klein’s energy drink with cyanide in April 2013, causing her to die three days later.
Ferrante has denied that and suggested his 41-year-old wife either wasn’t poisoned or, if she was, committed suicide. Ferrante says cyanide he ordered two days before she fell suddenly ill was for stem cell research.
Ferrante faces life in prison if convicted.