Smiths Station man loses appeal in 2008 crime-spree slaying of Auburn University student
The Smiths Station, Alabama, man convicted and sentenced to death in the 2008 murder of an Auburn University coed has lost another step in his appeals.
The Lee County circuit judge who overrode a jury’s decision to give Courtney Larrell Lockhart life in prison and instead imposed the death penalty has rejected Lockhart’s appeal in the March 4 fatal shooting of freshman Lauren Burk, 18, of Marietta, Georgia.
Authorities said Lockhart, who was 23 at the time, was on a crime spree that included offenses in Phenix City and Smiths Station, in Newnan, Georgia, and in Columbus. He was captured after a police chase on Summerville Road in Phenix City.
A jury convicted him in Burk’s murder on Nov. 10, 2010, and voted unanimously to sentence him to life in prison without parole. But Walker overruled the jury and sentenced Lockhart to death.
After hearing testimony from Burk’s family, the judge said the death penalty was warranted because of the circumstances of the murder and of Lockhart’s other crimes, which jurors in the murder trial did not hear about, lest that prejudice their deliberations.
“It is therefore my decision to override the jury’s recommendation in this case and sentence Lockhart to death by lethal injection,” Walker said then.
Lockhart already has lost appeals to higher courts before his case came back to Walker, who on Friday upheld the jury’s conviction and the death sentence he had imposed.
THE MURDER
According to testimony in Lockhart’s trial, he was hunting for someone to rob that night as he waited in an Auburn University parking lot, where Burk came by about 8 p.m.
The former soldier forced her at gunpoint into her 2001 black Honda Civic, ordered her to undress, and then drove around the area for about 30 minutes, lamenting his misfortune and lack of employment.
Finally Burk jumped from the car to try to escape, and he shot her, the bullet penetrating both lungs, and left her lying on Alabama 147 between Lee Road 72 and U.S. 280. Despite witnesses’ attempts to save her, she later died.
Lockhart ditched Burk’s Honda in Auburn’s Hinton Field parking lot and set it afire, fleeing in his own car, which he twice gassed up using Burk’s credit card.
He had been targeting women, having already robbed two at gunpoint in Smiths Station and Phenix City. After Burk’s shooting, he continued on his rampage, robbing a woman March 5 in the parking lot of a LaGrange nursing home, and robbing another March 6 in a Sam’s Club parking lot in Columbus.
In the Columbus case, a 27-year-old woman told police she was with her 3-year-old child in the parking lot of the 5448-A Whittlesey Blvd. Sam’s Club when a man demanded her purse at gunpoint, before driving off in a silver two-door Honda or Toyota with an Alabama license plate.
On March 7, Lockhart hit a woman in the back of the head in the parking lot of a Walmart in Newnan, pushed her to the floorboard of her car and started to flee. When he realized a witness was following, he instead sped away in his own car.
Investigators got his tag number from surveillance video, and he was caught later that day after fleeing a traffic stop in Phenix City, where police chased him down and found he had Burk’s cell phone and iPod.
The case drew national attention, as it was featured on the “Nancy Grace” TV show and other national news. Before Lockhart went to trial, defense attorneys sought a change of venue as the court issued a gag order and sealed the case file to restrict additional media scrutiny.
Walker denied the defense motion to move the trial from Lee County because of all the attention the case had generated.
Lockhart’s 2010 trial took four days of testimony. The jury deliberated 6½ hours before finding him guilty of murder.
Lockhart today is 35 years old.
This story was originally published April 8, 2020 at 3:35 PM.