Carpenter found guilty of second-degree murder

Frank Carpenter Jr. was found guilty of second-degree murder today in the 2003 stabbing and beating death of 26-year-old Nicolas P. Martone.

A Worcester Superior Court jury of six men and six women deliberated for about 11 hours over two days before returning its verdicts about 3:45 p.m. Mr. Carpenter, who was charged with first-degree murder in the killing, was acquitted on a related armed robbery charge.

The jurors found Mr. Carpenter guilty of second-degree murder as a joint venturer in the May 5, 2003, slaying, which occurred on railroad tracks off Grand and Canterbury streets.

Prosecutors alleged that Mr. Carpenter, now 31, and a co-defendant, Donald H. Stewart III, murdered Mr. Martone and stole his pickup truck after the Rutland man went to 120 Grand St., where the two suspects were living in a makeshift apartment, to buy crack cocaine.

Mr. Stewart was sentenced to life imprisonment without parole in 2008 after being convicted of first-degree murder, robbery and assault charges in the killing. An autopsy determined that Mr. Martone was stabbed nine times in the neck and died as a result of those injuries, as well as blunt trauma of the head and neck.

Mr. Carpenter, who remains in custody without bail, is scheduled to be sentenced tomorrow morning. He is facing a mandatory sentence of life imprisonment with a possibility of parole in 15 years.

Mr. Carpenter told investigators it was Mr. Stewart who inflicted the stab wounds suffered by Mr. Martone.

His lawyer, Peter L. Ettenberg, raised a diminished capacity defense on Mr. Carpenter’s behalf, maintaining he was suffering from a mental impairment and drug addiction at the time of the killing and was unable to form the specific intent to kill. Mr. Ettenberg urged the jury in his closing argument not to find Mr. Carpenter guilty of first-degree murder.

Assistant District Attorney Daniel J. Bennett argued that the evidence warranted a conviction under all three of the prosecution’s theories of first-degree murder -- that the killing was premeditated, that it was committed with extreme atrocity or cruelty and that it occurred during the commission of a felony, armed robbery, punishable by up to life imprisonment.