Jurors find Hall guilty of second Boise-area killing

BOISE – A jury Monday found Erick Virgil Hall guilty of the first-degree murder and felony rape of Cheryl Ann Hanlon.

The conviction came on the third anniversary of Hall’s conviction in the murder of another woman.

After deliberating for more than two full days, the jury concluded Hall raped and killed Hanlon in 2003 in the Boise foothills. Some of the jurors struggled to keep from crying as the verdict was read, while Hall – who is already on death row for the murder of flight attendant Lynn Henneman in 2000 – appeared unshaken.

Now the jurors must decide whether Hall is eligible for the death penalty in Hanlon’s murder. A DNA sample taken after Hall was arrested and charged with Hanlon’s slaying linked Hall to the murder of Henneman, whose body was discovered along the Boise greenbelt.

The sentencing phase of the trial could take place in the next few days, 4th District Judge Thomas Neville said.

Shortly after the verdict, Neville turned down a request from defense attorney Rob Chastain to declare a mistrial. Chastain said that since at least one juror – the man elected to serve as the jury foreman – knew that Hall was already on death row, the entire trial had been tainted and violated Hall’s right to a fair trial.

The juror’s wife apparently told him that Hall was a death row inmate, according to court testimony. The juror immediately told her to stop talking and reported it to the judge, according to court records. Neville ultimately decided that the man would be able to “compartmentalize” his wife’s comment and would be able to serve as a juror.

On Monday, Neville said he was sticking with his earlier decision about the juror and that jury was fair.

Ada County Deputy Prosecutor Jan Bennetts has said Hall exploited Hanlon’s kind nature, luring her to the Boise foothills before raping her, strangling her and trying to bury her.

But Hall’s defense attorneys maintained that Hall and Hanlon had rough, consensual sex and that Hanlon’s death was an accident.

Hanlon’s body was found by a teenager who was walking his dog along a trail in the foothills on March 1, 2003. Prosecutors said she had been beaten so severely that she looked like the victim of a traffic accident. At the time, Boise detectives were still searching for the person who killed Henneman three years earlier, and there were some similarities between the cases – both women had been strangled with something other than a pair of hands; both had been severely beaten and raped.

A witness who had seen Hanlon walking with a man in downtown Boise the night before she was killed helped police do a composite sketch, and Hall was arrested a short time later.