WACO, Texas — In an unexpectedly quick end to testimonies, both the State and defense rested their cases in the trial of Seth Sutton on Thursday, Aug. 17.
Both Sutton and another Waco attorney, Chelsea Tijerina, were charged with criminal solicitation of capital murder in 2020.
Sutton was indicted in August 2020, alongside the late Tijerina, for an alleged plot to kill Marcus Daniel Beaudin, Tijerina's ex-husband.
The State brought Detective Sam Key to the stand on Aug. 17. Key is in charge of the Waco Police Department Special Crimes Unit, responsible for investigating violent crimes in Waco.
The Drug Enforcement Unit informed Key of the investigation into Sutton on May 21, 2020. From there, Key became the lead in the investigation.
In court, the jury saw video of Sutton being taken in for questioning by Key and another officer.
In the video, Key can be heard reading Sutton his Miranda Rights and explaining why Sutton was arrested.
May 14, 2020, is when Key documented that Sutton told the undercover officer he wanted to kill Beaudin. That conversation was never recorded by the officer.
Sutton can also be heard saying if someone said he was plotting to kill someone, it was a lie.
The State also brought in another police official who was in charge of extraditing information from Sutton and Tijerina's phone's after their arrest. The official says there were two phone numbers with a form of the name 'Seth Sutton' attached to them.
Tijerina's phone records indicated there had been at least 30 to 50 messages that were missing between her and Sutton. However, Key admitted the rest of Tijerina's phone messages were not searched.
Once the State rested its case, the defense took less than five minutes for theirs and only included a stipulation, which was one sentence long.
The statement said Beaudin was not told of any potential threat on his life by law enforcement from the time the undercover officer said Sutton told him he wanted to kill Beaudin up until Sutton was arrested.
Key told the jury the statement was in fact true and his signature was shown at the bottom of that statement.
Once that was acknowledged, the defense rested its case.
Jury summations will begin the morning of Friday, Aug. 18 after the judge reads the jury the Court's charge.
A verdict is expected to come that afternoon.