A Tennessee man has been convicted and sentenced to life in prison for the 2010 murder of former NBA player Lorenzen Wright.
Billy Ray Turner, 51, was found guilty of first-degree murder, attempted murder and conspiracy in a Shelby County court on Monday, ESPN reports. The jury of 12 reportedly handed down the verdict after about two hours of deliberation. Judge Lee Coffee then sentenced Turner to life in prison on the murder conviction.
Sentencing on the remaining charges will follow within 45 days, according to WREG. Since Tennessee considers a life sentence to be 60 years, Turner could be released after 51 years, which marks 85 percent of the sentence.
Per ESPN, Judge Coffee called the late athlete “a sacred son,” encouraging his mother Deborah Marion to “celebrate the good” about Wright.
“I’m just glad we got him,” Marion said of Turner just after the verdict, according to video from Fox 13 Memphis. “It took 12 years … If it took 24 years I wouldn’t mind. But we got him now.”
She added that she no longer has to “worry” and said, “Maybe I can sleep all night now. We got him.”
On July 28, 2010, Wright, a 34-year-old father of six turned up dead in a field, he’d been shot 11 times in the head, torso and right forearm. Wright, who played a total of 13 NBA seasons, was out of the league and living in Atlanta at the time of his death but was visiting Memphis. He first went missing on the night of July 19, 2010, and made a 911 call in which nine gunshots could be heard.
Turner was arrested in late 2017, after police announced they had found the murder weapon in a Mississippi lake, about 50 miles from where Wright’s body was discovered. Turner was charged a month later.
Shortly after Turner’s arrest, Wright’s ex-wife Sherra Wright-Robinson was also arrested and charged with first-degree murder, conspiracy and criminal attempt first-degree murder. She pleaded guilty to facilitation to first-degree murder in 2019 and received a 30-year prison sentence. She would be eligible for parole nine years later.
Wright-Robinson also pleaded guilty to facilitation to commit attempted first-degree murder, which carries an eight-year sentence. She was credited with nearly 20 months of time served.
According to prosecutors, the charge of conspiracy to commit first-degree murder was dropped.
Turner was a deacon at the church where Wright-Robinson was a former member.
Marion told The Commercial Appeal at the time that she believed her former daughter-in-law was motivated by Wright’s $1 million life insurance policy.
After the guilty plea, Marion said she thought of her grandchildren.
“As long as I could think of them, I could stay positive,” Marion said. “I’m so glad this is over so my grandkids can heal and rest and come see their grandmama.”
