A Hazelwood man will spend the rest of his life in prison after a jury convicted him late Thursday of second-degree murder for a 2019 Wilkinsburg home invasion.
Brandon Franklin, 27, will be formally sentenced in November, but second-degree, or felony, murder carries a mandatory prison term of life without parole in Pennsylvania.
Police charged Franklin in the Nov. 14, 2019, shooting death of Raymond Jackson.
Jackson, 42, was in an upstairs bedroom of his home on Woodlawn Avenue in Wilkinsburg when two men burst through the front door.
One of them wore a mask. The other, later identified as Franklin, did not.
Police said Franklin went upstairs, kicked in the bedroom door and found Jackson inside, holding his 11-month-old granddaughter.
Jackson put her down on the bed, and Franklin shot him four times.
Franklin went to trial on the same charges last year, but that case ended with a hung jury.
During opening statements last week, Deputy District Attorney Ilan Zur told the jury that the motive that night wasn’t to steal anything, but to kill Jackson.
Although no one in the house was able to identify Franklin, there was a security camera in the living room that captured video of the attacker’s face, as well as a distinctive pink-and-black handgun he carried.
Investigators broadcast those images through local media after the shooting. Soon thereafter, witnesses came forward and identified Franklin.
One of those was a man who’d known Franklin as a child. He told police he had a pink-and-black handgun at his home, and that after Franklin visited a few months before the shooting, the gun was missing.
“It amounted to enough evidence to meet the burden beyond a reasonable doubt,” Zur said after the verdict. “I’m thrilled we were able to get an appropriate verdict the second time around.”
Defense attorney Aaron Sontz did not respond to a request for comment.
The jury of nine men and three women, which deliberated for about five hours Thursday afternoon, also found Franklin guilty of burglary and conspiracy.
Franklin, who chose to wear the fluorescent yellow jail uniform for the duration of his trial instead of street clothes, showed no reaction as the verdict was read.
The trial, before Allegheny County Common Pleas Judge Elliot Howsie, began Aug. 22.
Paula Reed Ward is a TribLive reporter covering federal and Allegheny County courts. She joined the Trib in 2019 after spending nearly 17 years at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, where she was part of a Pulitzer Prize-winning team. She is the author of “Death by Cyanide.” She can be reached at pward@triblive.com.