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Silenced by muzzle, he hears 5 life terms

A jury's verdict and a judge's sentence end a trial made tumultuous by Steven Aitken's antics.

By CHRIS TISCH
Published January 18, 2006

	[Times photo: Willie J. Allen Jr.]
	Strapped to a chair, gagged and guarded by deputies, Steven Aitken hears a jury's verdict Tuesday before being sentenced to five life prison terms in Pinellas-Pasco Circuit Court. Aitken's antics during his weeklong trial for a string of Pinellas County bank holdups in 2003 included yelling at Judge Richard Luce, the lawyers and gallery and, on Tuesday, screaming at jurors.

LARGO - On a January day three years ago, Steven Aitken began a series of bank robberies that terrorized a community for months, gained nationwide attention and galvanized a countywide police task force.

Tuesday evening, Aitken was strapped in a chair in a Pinellas courtroom, his face covered with a Hannibal Lecter-like plastic shield. His eyes were closed. Six helmeted and gloved deputies stood around him.

Aitken, 39, listened as a jury convicted him of more than 20 criminal charges in connection with his 2003 stickups.

Minutes later, Judge Richard Luce sentenced Aitken to five life sentences.

"You made your bed and now you have to sleep in it," Luce told Aitken. "The location of that bed: Department of Corrections, state of Florida."

With that, Aitken was taken away, ending a tumultuous weeklong trial in which he was removed from the courtroom four times for yelling at the judge, lawyers and gallery. Luce had enough on Tuesday when Aitken screamed at the jury, then refused to apologize to the judge for the outburst.

"Richard, you're corrupt," Aitken told the judge. "You don't know what a fair trial is."

So Luce called for the chair. The judge said he had never gagged or shackled a defendant before in 25 years on the bench.

"The only individual who I've seen in this proceeding, start to finish, who is corrupt," Luce told Aitken after the verdict, "is you."

Jurors took about three hours to convict Aitken of 21 felony counts, including 13 charges of armed robbery and two charges of aggravated assault with a firearm. The jury acquitted him of two grand theft auto charges.

Aitken mounted a series of violent and brazen holdups of Pinellas banks in 2003. He vaulted counters, wielded a gun and threatened to kill bank employees.

Aitken put a gun between the eyes of an elderly woman in one holdup, then pushed her down. She cried during her testimony last week.

In another holdup, Aitken scared a teller so badly that she ran out of her shoes seeking cover. The shoes can be a seen in a surveillance photo as Aitken holds a gun to another teller's head.

In one robbery, Aitken had a teller kneel on the floor near her drawer, then fired the gun into her cash drawer, just inches from her head. The woman's ears rang for 36 hours.

"He just got lucky that bullet didn't ricochet into her head," prosecutor Lydia Wardell told jurors in closing arguments. "She's lucky to be alive."

Through fingerprints and surveillance photos, detectives identified Aitken as the bank robber after the third holdup, but he continued to boldly rob banks and vanish before police could arrive.

He at times walked right past "wanted" posters of himself hanging in the windows of the banks he robbed. Only after the case was featured on America's Most Wanted was Aitken found hiding out in a Daytona Beach hotel.

After his arrest, Aitken asked deputies to organize a news conference at the jail and admitted the robberies. He admitted his guilt in open court and in recorded phone calls.

He refused to cooperate with attorneys assigned to represent him. He threatened to kill some of his lawyers and their families.

Aitken tried an insanity defense, but wouldn't let doctors hired by his lawyers examine him. He instead insisted on using a therapist whose name he found in a telephone book.

The woman was not a licensed psychologist in Florida and had never evaluated a criminal defendant. She didn't read any of the police reports to learn the facts of the crimes and admitted in a deposition she didn't know the legal guidelines for insanity.

"She didn't even know what the word "forensic' meant, even though she was doing a forensic evaluation," Wardell told the jury.

Two doctors called by prosecutors, who between them have evaluated thousands of defendants, said Aitken was sane at the time of the holdups.

That's because Aitken took steps to avoid capture, which indicated he knew right from wrong. He used stolen getaway cars. He carried a police scanner, multiple guns, a bullet-proof vest and handcuff keys. He brought a bucket along on his holdups in which to place exploding dye packs.

"That's not an indication of insanity. It means he's cunning, smart," Wardell told jurors.

In closing arguments, defense attorney Jim Martin suggested Aitken had to be insane to commit the robberies while so many police officers were looking for him.

"There is a mountain of evidence against Steven Aitken and if that wasn't enough, Steven's confessed to everyone who would listen," Martin told jurors. "But if you find a reasonable doubt that Steven Aitken was sane, then you must find him not guilty.

Wardell told jurors that Aitken was acting, something Luce agreed with after the verdict.

"You have unsuccessfully tried to manipulate the entire process," Luce told Aitken. "The jury has obviously rejected your entire pitch."

[Last modified January 18, 2006, 01:09:07]