MID-CITY : Jury Urges Life Term for 1 ‘Orange Grove’ Defendant

One jury deliberating in the penalty phase of the so-called Nightmare on Orange Grove murder case has recommended a life sentence without the possibility for parole for one defendant, but a second panel deadlocked 11 to 1 for the same for the other defendant.

The juries’ actions, taken Friday but not announced until Tuesday, make it unlikely that Lonnie Lewis, 32, and his half-brother, Jerome Martin, 25, will face the death penalty for their parts in the 1989 burning deaths of Lee Gottstein, 57, and his wife, Sylvia Davis, 45. Gottstein and Davis died at their home on Orange Grove Avenue in Los Angeles’ Mid-City area after they and another woman were forced into a closet during a drug robbery and set afire. The second woman escaped from the closet.