Becker jury in deliberation

Assistant Attorney General Scott Brown said Wednesday the shooting of the legendary football coach Ed Thomas by Mark Becker was “calculated and planned.”

“The facts in this case can only be characterized as brutal,” Brown said in his closing argument. “Mark Becker is the one who committed the brutal act. Mark Becker made his choice on June 24 and Mark Becker is guilty of murder in the first-degree.

Susan Flander, Becker's public defender, said in her closing the issue at stake is whether Becker was insane the day he killed Thomas. A psychiatrist testified Becker is paranoid schizophrenia and didn't have the capacity to understand the nature and quality of his acts and couldn't distinguish right from wrong.

“He was delusional. He thought Thomas was trying to rape him,” Flander said.

The jury deliberated Wednesday about five hours and will resume at 9 a.m. Thursday in Butler County District Court. Testimony wrapped up Tuesday after two weeks.

“This entire case is about Mark Becker's state of mind. You have to look at what he did,” Brown told the jury.

Brown laid out the elements of first-degree murder and went over Becker's confession of the crime but he spent more time on the insanity issue and how his actions are evidence that Becker understood he was taking a human's life and he knew right from wrong.

Becker concealed his plan that day from his parents and he “practiced his plan,” Brown said. If he didn't know it was wrong, why would he hide it? He also understood what he was doing because he fired the gun at a bird house to make sure he could shoot Thomas.

He played the audio part of the videotaped police interview for the jurors so they could hear Becker say he missed the bird house and then knew he would have to get close to Thomas to be successful.

Flander said Becker wasn't rational. He thought Thomas was “Satan.” He thought he had killed someone evil. “There is no rational motive in this case.”

Flander went through all of Becker's mental health history, his three hospital commitments and the psychiatrists diagnosed him with schizophrenia. She also focused on his bizarre behavior like him bathing in toilet water and touching himself at the jail.

Becker heard voices and he believed it was the “devil tyrant”- Thomas - that was driving him to do this. She said he was clearly insane when he shot and killed Thomas.

He talked to his second cousin about the devil and a few days before the shooting he broke out windows at Dwight Rogers home in Cedar Falls because Becker thought Rogers was hypnotizing him with a teddy bear. That's when he led police on high speed chase and yelled at Satan in front of the police and told them he felt like a deer.

Flander said there is evidence that Becker didn't know right from wrong because he didn't speed away from the school after shooting Thomas. He didn't feel any guilt or shame. Becker believed he was working for the police, she said.

Brown on rebuttal said Flander spent almost 50 minutes saying Becker is paranoid schizophrenia and the state has never disputed it.

“But having schizophrenia doesn't equal insanity,” Brown said. “Becker made some unusual statements but it's not the legal standard of insanity in Iowa.”

Brown said if Thomas was literally Satan to Becker, why didn't Becker “shout it from the rooftops if he thought he was doing something right?”