Clayton Campbell

There were things at Jonathan's house that I was aware of that they didn't have.

I'm a bit older than Jonathan, probably... 13 years or so older than him. That's Clayton Campbell, Jonathan Hearn's defense attorney. I figured we had something in common and I could relate to him in that respect. I also kind of knew, you know, how to relate to his family a little bit.

the better he liked his chances at trial. I thought, hey, we have an actual shot at developing a defense. And of course, we ended up with a much better shot than I thought once we started digging into the reports.

They tested all of Jonathan's firearms. Not one of them matched the bullets that were used to kill Robert.

His reason for that is that he actually has a conscience. He knows what he did was wrong. And he felt that maintaining a not guilty plea was dishonest. And that what he should do is he shouldn't make the fact that he killed someone worse by lying about it and maintaining a lie.

To him, this posed a moral dilemma. I have the same religious moral viewpoint that he has, but I have these professional obligations as his attorney. I'm supposed to protect him. It's very difficult to find some kind of a way out where we satisfy both his conscience, where he admits wrongdoing, and at the same time protect him from life without the possibility of parole.

There were things at Jonathan's house that I was aware of that they didn't have.

Clayton Campbell saw the makings of a deal. My hope was, okay, we give them all that information, then they couldn't find it and never use it against him. If they decide to pull the rug out from under us and back out on the deal.

Well, that first meeting, I got the feeling that Jonathan felt that this was more of his chance to basically get it off his chest and confess. And so it did scare me a little bit that he was more focused on his own guilt at that meeting than on sharing all the information they needed about her.

I made sure we included everything that we were aware of that could possibly be discovered and harmful to Jonathan.

could not be used against him. All the stuff that was hidden, we wanted to make sure they got all that stuff so that it couldn't be used against Jonathan, even if a deal wasn't reached.

I don't know whether the paint buckets are still there. Were they thrown away? Who knows? And I'd seen that garage. It's like a lot of garages. There's a lot of stuff in there. And sure enough, late at night, it must have been 10 or 11 in the evening, I hear back from Detective Meyer that they found it.

Their son had just confessed to murder. That was probably the hardest conversation I've ever had with a client's family, you know, is to tell these people who were very hopeful that Jonathan was innocent and that he would be vindicated, that he, in fact, was guilty and that he was admitting that and making a deal with the prosecutor.

That was, you know, as you can imagine, difficult for them to hear.

There were things at Jonathan's house that I was aware of that they didn't have.

I'm a bit older than Jonathan, probably... 13 years or so older than him. That's Clayton Campbell, Jonathan Hearn's defense attorney. I figured we had something in common and I could relate to him in that respect. I also kind of knew how to relate to his family a little bit.

the better he liked his chances at trial. I thought, hey, we have an actual shot at developing a defense. And of course, we ended up with a much better shot than I thought once we started digging into the reports.

They tested all of Jonathan's firearms. Not one of them matched the bullets that were used to kill Robert.

His reason for that is that he actually has a conscience. He knows what he did was wrong. And he felt that maintaining a not guilty plea was dishonest. And that what he should do is he shouldn't make the fact that he killed someone worse by lying about it and maintaining a lie.

To him, this posed a moral dilemma. I have the same religious moral viewpoint that he has, but I have these professional obligations as his attorney. I'm supposed to protect him. It's very difficult to find some kind of a way out where we satisfy both his conscience, where he admits wrongdoing, and at the same time protect him from life without the possibility of parole.

There were things at Jonathan's house that I was aware of that they didn't have.

Clayton Campbell saw the makings of a deal. My hope was, okay, we give them all that information, then they couldn't find it and never use it against him. If they decide to pull the rug out from under us and back out on the deal.

Well, that first meeting, I got the feeling that Jonathan felt that this was more of his chance to basically get it off his chest and confess. And so it did scare me a little bit that he was more focused on his own guilt at that meeting than on sharing all the information they needed about her.

I made sure we included everything that we were aware of that could possibly be discovered and harmful to Jonathan.

could not be used against him. All the stuff that was hidden, we wanted to make sure they got all that stuff so that it couldn't be used against Jonathan, even if a deal wasn't reached.

I don't know whether the paint buckets are still there. Were they thrown away? Who knows? And I'd seen that garage. It's like a lot of garages. There's a lot of stuff in there. And sure enough, late at night, it must have been 10 or 11 in the evening, I hear back from Detective Meyer that they found it.

Their son had just confessed to murder. That was probably the hardest conversation I've ever had with a client's family, you know, is to tell these people who were very hopeful that Jonathan was innocent and that he would be vindicated, that he, in fact, was guilty and that he was admitting that and making a deal with the prosecutor.

That was, you know, as you can imagine, difficult for them to hear.