An Arizona jury deliberated for about 10 hours since late Tuesday afternoon before finding a convicted murderer guilty in the kidnapping and killing of 6-year-old Isabel Celis in 2012.
It was Christopher Clements’ second trial in Celis’s death. The first trial ended with a hung jury last year, as CrimeOnline reported.
Clements, 42, was convicted in 2022 in the kidnapping and murder of 13-year-old Maribel Gonzalez in 2014 and sentenced to life in prison. And he was already serving a 35 year sentence at that time for a 2017 burglary conviction.
It was in 2017 that Clements led investigators to Celis’s body in a remote area north of Tucson, but he insisted he did not kill the little girl and had learned the location of the body from other inmates.
Almost exactly a year ago — on March 3, 2023 — a jury reported out that it could not reach a unanimous verdict on Clements’ guilt, and the judge declared a mistrial.
The result was different this year, as the four women and eight men completed their work on Thursday, KOLD reported.
The “jury did a great job sorting through all of the evidence and all of the info we had to reach what we believe was the right result,” Pima County Attorney Tracy Miller said.
Prosecutors presented cell phone data showing Clements in the area of Celis’s home and the spot where her body was found as well as witnesses who saw him knocking on doors in the neighborhood where Celis lived, asking about cars, KVOA reported.
“We had a different group of people that were willing to all talk and spend a great deal of time going through the evidence and the information that they had so that they, too, could make the best decision possible,” Miller said, according to KOLD.
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[Featured image: Isabel Celis/handout]
