12 April 2010 :

A 14-member military jury was unanimous in its guilty verdict on three specifications of premeditated murder for Army Master Sgt. Timothy B. Hennis, 48, white, meaning Hennis could face the death penalty for a triple murder in May 1985. Hennis was escorted out of the Fort Bragg courthouse his hands cuffed in front of him as they were in July 1986, when he was first sentenced to death for the rape and murder of 31-year-old Kathryn Eastburn, and the murders of two of her young children, Kara, 5, and Erin, 3. After his initial conviction in 1986, Hennis was granted a retrial because of the inappropriate use of inflammatory evidence by the prosecution. At the retrial, Hennis was acquitted in 1989 in North Carolina's court system when the defense discredited the witnesses and demonstrated that a neighbor who resembled Hennis could have been the murderer. Hennis The Army commenced its prosecution in 2006 after DNA testing - unavailable to investigators in the 1980s - matched Hennis to sperm from Eastburn's body. The jury reached its verdict after following three weeks of testimony. The same jury now must consider whether to sentence Hennis to death. A death sentence requires another unanimous vote by the jury; otherwise, Hennis faces life with the possibility of parole.