Jury selection and opening arguments began today (Monday) in the murder trial of Nicholas Stanley, who’s charged with killing a man who had molested his family member.
Stanley confessed his vigilante act on TV months ago, telling ABC57 news, “I did what I had to do. I took him out.” Prosecutors say he waited about two weeks after Allen Cogswell was released from prison before fatally shooting Cogswell in June.
Cogswell had served seven years of a 12-year prison term for molesting a female relative of Stanley’s. He had been staying at the Daylite Inn on Cassopolis Street in Elkhart. Prosecutors say Stanley knocked on Cogswell’s motel room door and shot him when he answered.
Court records show that at a closed hearing last week, Elkhart Circuit Judge Michael Christofeno denied Stanley’s request to offer an affirmative defense of insanity.
Stanley’s sister, Jessica Stanley, recently told Newsweek she was devastated by his televised confession but she’s still confident a jury won’t send her brother to prison in light of his history.
”My brother was very staunch in the fact that he hated pedophiles and there’s been many of us in our immediate family who’ve also suffered from sex abuse when we were children,” she said.
