John Evander Couey, convicted of murdering 9-year-old Jessica Marie Lunsford, was in court Friday awaiting sentencing on the charges of abducting, raping, and killing Jessica Marie Lunsford. While the judge announced to the courtroom that Couey has received the death sentence, Couey was emotionally unresponsive. Couey buried Jessica alive in March 2005 with her purple dolphin after telling her he would take her home and talking her into hiding inside a trash bad so no one would see her, tying another trash bag over the top of her. He had kidnapped her days earlier and held her in a closet in a trailer in between the times he sexually assaulted her.

Couey then placed Jessica in a shallow hole and covered her with dirt. Jessica poked two of her little fingers through one the plastic bags at one point in an attempt to try to get out of the bags, before Couey buries her alive. Her death is hard to consider for even the few minutes she must have suffered horrendously. No child deserves to die alone, frightened and at the hands of a man so cruel.

During his trial Couey sits coloring with Crayons in an attempt to gain sympathy and try to avoid the sentencing of death by appearing mentally retarded. There is a Federal Law that prohibits Mentally Challenged or Mentally Retarded people from receiving the death penalty.

The image of John Evander Couey as mentally challenged flew out the window after his interview with police. In his police interview, John Evander Couey confessed to kidnapping Jessica. In addition, Couey tells police from the start what happened to the time he buries her outside his half sister in-laws property. During the police confession, Couey uses specific words to describe what happened like “I had sexual intercourse” and “I sexually assaulted the girl.” Couey did not say he had sex with her. He did not use the curse word usually associated with lewd acts of sexual misconduct. He did not say I raped her. The words he used seemed out of place for a man of impaired mental capacity.

Couey has told Jessica’s father, Mark Lunsford that when he sees Jessica in Heaven he wishes to tell her he is sorry for what he has done to her. Wow! How grandiose and entitled John Evander Couey seems when making this statement. Does Couey really believe he will make it to heaven after the horrible pain and suffering he has caused a little girl in life and then in death? Couey is truly evil. Evil has a special place and it is not in heaven. In the Courtroom, Mark Lunsford Jessica’s Father informed Couey…”I do not think you’re going to make it there!” (Referring to heaven)

The death of a child is unnatural. Children are not supposed to die before a parent. Parents are supposed to die first and children are supposed to bury their parent. Since Jessica’s death, her Father Mark Lunsford has worked diligently to change Florida’s laws regarding sex offender’s registration and supervision of released sexual predators. Jessica she has not died in vain and will continue to live on in the lives she is helping every day. Jessica Lunsford the beautiful girl in the pink hat has changed the world at nine years old. Friday there was Justice for Jessica, when John Evander Couey received the death penalty.