Capano Awaits Sentencing

The jury that convicted Thomas Capano, a former prosecutor, of the murder of his mistress meets Wednesday to consider sentencing of the millionaire attorney.

CBS News Legal Consultant Kristin Jeannette-Meyers reports that the jury must recommend whether Capano should spend life in prison or be executed by lethal injection. The judge in the case will make the final decision.

Capano also faces charges of hiring a hit man to keep his brother and another former lover from testifying against him in connection with the murder of 30-year-old Anne Marie Fahey, who vanished in 1996.

Suspicion centered on Capano, a powerful player in Delaware politics, because he had taken Fahey to a Philadelphia restaurant on June 27, 1996, the night she disappeared, and because passages in her diary revealed they had been lovers.

Prosecutors theorized Capano killed Fahey when she tried to break off their three-year affair, but they had little to go on. There was no body and no murder weapon.

It was one of Capano's brothers who broke the case open. Gerry Capano admitted to prosecutors he had helped his brother dump a body in the ocean, stuffed in a huge cooler.

Bloodstains were found in Capano's house. Investigators also learned that Capano had replaced a rug and dumped a bloodstained sofa at a family construction site not long after Fahey vanished.

Thomas Capano was charged with murder but continued to insist he had no idea what happened to Fahey. Then, in a bombshell at his trial, his lawyers pointed the finger at Debbie MacIntyre, another of Capano's mistresses.

Capano told jurors MacIntyre caught him with Fahey, pulled out a gun intending to commit suicide, but killed Fahey by mistake.

MacIntyre said she wasn't even at Capano's house the night Fahey died. She told investigators Capano had her buy him a gun in May 1996 and later asked her to lie about it.

The jury did not believe Capano's story, and after three days of deliberations convicted him of first-degree murder. Capano was returned to jail to await sentencing.

"This was about justice and justice has been done," said David Weiss, spokesman for the Fahey family. Fahey was Gov. Thomas Carper's scheduling secretary.