What to Know<\/p>\n
Previous Trial Coverage: Day 1<\/a> | Day 2<\/a> | Day 3<\/a> | Day 4<\/a> | Day 5<\/a> | Day 6<\/a> | Day 7<\/a> | Day 8<\/a><\/strong> | Day 9-11<\/a><\/strong> | Day 12<\/strong><\/a> | Day 13<\/a><\/strong> | Day 14<\/a><\/strong> | Day 15<\/a><\/strong> | Day 16<\/a><\/strong> | Day 17<\/a><\/strong> | Day 18<\/strong><\/a> | Day 19<\/strong><\/a> | Day 20<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Tanner Horner, the man who admitted to killing 7-year-old Athena Strand in November 2022, was sentenced to death Tuesday by a Tarrant County jury.<\/p>\n Nearly a month ago, Horner pleaded guilty and admitted to kidnapping and killing Strand before the start of his capital murder trial, sending the trial to the sentencing phase.<\/p>\n During the trial, the jury heard a chilling audio recording of Strand’s abduction and murder taken from within Horner’s delivery van. Horner covered the camera before attacking the girl, but the microphone still recorded about an hour’s worth of audio. The jury also heard gruesome testimony from the investigators who interviewed Horner in the days after the girl’s disappearance and of their search and recovery of her body.<\/p>\n Horner’s defense team told the jury about the defendant’s upbringing, highlighting his own abuse and mental health challenges and argued his life should be spared because he would no longer be a threat in prison.<\/p>\n After 19 days of testimony, both sides rested their cases on Monday. Closing remarks were delivered Tuesday morning, and the jury began deliberating shortly after 11 a.m. After about two-and-a-half hours, the jury reached its final decision about Horner’s fate.<\/p>\n A sentence of death is automatically sent to the Texas Criminal Appeals Court. Having pled guilty to capital murder, Horner faced a punishment of either life in prison without parole or the death penalty.<\/p>\n The murder occurred in Wise County and the case was moved to Tarrant County because the defense team was concerned about Horner getting a fair trial. The prosecutors were from Wise County and the jury was seated with Tarrant County residents. Horner’s defense was provided by the Regional Public Defenders Office.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"What to Know The trial will be livestreamed and live blogged in this article. The judge has warned…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":776475,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5138],"tags":[5229,7371,7372,358,3187,67,586,132,5230,68,2969,70669],"class_list":["post-776474","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fort-worth","tag-america","tag-fort-worth","tag-fortworth","tag-texas","tag-tx","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa","tag-wise-county"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/776474","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=776474"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/776474\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/776475"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=776474"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=776474"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=776474"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}