Oct 8, 2007 4:03 pm US/Central
Marcus Potts' Killer Sentenced To Life In Prison
Minneapolis (AP) ―
A Minneapolis man was sentenced on Monday to life in prison in the 1990 killing of an 11-year-old boy.
Eugene Fort maintained his innocence on Monday. "These people are wrong, man," Fort said. "I'll take a lie detector test, anything to prove to y'all I ain't did nothing."
In May, a jury convicted Fort on first-degree murder charges for the stabbing death of Marcus Potts. The boy was stabbed more than 44 times in his home in Minneapolis, apparently after interrupting a burglary.
The boy's mother found his body when she returned from work.
Fort's attorney had asked for a retrial, contending another man confessed the killing to other inmates. But a Hennepin County District Court Judge Jay Quam determined the inmates weren't credible.
The boy's mother, Verona "Cricket" Potts, sat in the front row throughout the trial and hearings into her son's death.
Potts said in a brief prepared statement: "It's been terrible on our family. Marcus was a good kid. He loved school. He loved football. He loved basketball. He loved hanging out with his homies."
The sentencing did not bring closure for her, she said, but it was "justice that's been done."
Fort had long been a suspect in the case, but it wasn't until recently that advancements in DNA analysis permitted the prosecution to go forward after blood in the Fort home were determined to belong to Marcus.
Fort was charged with murder last fall.
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