The Summit County jury has returned its verdict, and Bobby Cutts is guilty on all charges — sort of.

He was convicted of the lesser included (simple) murder charge on Count One, the death of Jessie Davis. This means he can NOT receive the death penalty for this count. It also means the jury didn’t buy the “it was an accident” defense.

On Counts Two and Three, however, he WAS found guilty of Aggravated Murder, so the death-eligible specifications apply. Count Two, termination of pregnancy, deals with killing the mother of a fetus and therefore ending that fetus’s viability. Note: Ohio law dictates that any fetus dying with its mother is eligible for this charge; the question of viability outside the womb is irrelevant, and that leads us to Count Three: Death of a child under the age of 13. For this one to stick, the jury has to agree that the fetus could have survived outside its mother’s body. Since she was only two weeks from her due date, they figured, yeah.

Cutts was also convicted of Aggravated Burglary, two counts of Abuse of a Corpse, all felonies, and the misdemeanor charge of Child Endangerment.

I’ve covered several Ohio death penalty cases as a journalist, so I’ve had to familiarize myself with the law a bit. No, I’m not an expert by any stretch. But I’ve had to explain the nuances several times, and I’ve talked to a bunch of judges and attorneys to make sure I got it right. So I’ll try to outline this one for you:

The difference between Murder (life) and Aggravated Murder (possible death) is just that — aggravation. In other words, certain “specifications” are attached to the actual killing to make it bad enough (so to speak) to attach the ultimate penalty. That’s where the burglary charge comes in.

It’s common to confuse Burglary (unlawful entry/presence) with Robbery (theft) because burglars generally break in to steal stuff. The legal argument revolves around whether Cutts was there unlawfully or not. Even if Jessie Davis let him in wilfully, the law says that her permission is revoked once a crime occurs. Common sense says she didn’t say, “C’mon in, kill me and our unborn child, and leave your toddler son alone in the house with an open jug of bleach on the floor for more than a full day.”

Another specification is multiple deaths. Since two people died, the murder of one “aggravates” the murder of the other. Lots of other specifications exist under Ohio law as well: use of a gun in commission of a felony, for example, but those don’t apply here.

So why the lesser charge for Count One? Without polling the jury, it’s hard to say, but there are several possible explanations. Maybe they believed the lack of premeditation argument. Perhaps they saw it as a crime of passion and therefore deserving of some mercy. Or maybe it was a compromise.

In the long run, though, it comes down to the recommendation they return during the penalty phase. The judge is allowed to “step down” to life from death but not “up” to death from life. That part begins on February 25th. Oh, yeah, I’ll be watching.