Jury gets case of Fargo man accused of murdering cousin

FARGO--It's been a case riddled with oddities--complaints about being poisoned with expensive jellyfish, an accused killer who called police himself to report he'd shot his own cousin and a bottle full of Gatorade supposedly dosed with sulfuric acid.

But Tuesday, Christopher Hampton's defense attorney told jurors every one of those oddities was beside the point in considering whether Hampton was guilty of murder in the fatal shooting of his roommate and cousin.

"They want to talk about drug use, about poisoning ... about things that frankly don't matter," said Nicholas Thornton. "The state's entire case rests on one point: Where was the gun?"

Thornton told a Cass County District Court jury in his closing argument that it didn't make sense that Randall Doehner, Hampton's 28-year-old cousin, would have given Hampton his gun days before the shooting, as prosecutors have suggested.

"Let's just apply common sense," Thornton told jurors. "If someone's accusing you of poisoning them, why would you give them a gun?"

Hampton has claimed he shot Doehner in the back and the back of the head in self-defense on the night of June 26, 2014, after Doehner first cornered the smaller man in the kitchen of their shared home and pointed the pistol at him before dropping it during the scuffle.

He then called 911 to report he'd shot the other man in self-defense, but he admitted on the stand to lying to dispatchers in the same call about seeing Doehner's girlfriend go for a shotgun on the wall.

That's "a guy who admitted to you on the stand that he lied right out of the gates in this case," Cass County prosecutor Ryan Younggren told jurors. "Do you think a guy who keeps a pitchfork by his bed, and a knife, is going to leave anything to chance?"

Younggren told jurors the case came down to Hampton's obsession with the notion he'd been poisoned, combined with the methamphetamines and marijuana found in Hampton's system by a parade of doctors he'd seen in the days before the shooting.

Jurors deliberated for about two hours Tuesday afternoon without reaching a verdict and will continue this morning. The trial included five days of testimony.

Hampton is charged with Class AA felony murder, which can carry a lifetime term in prison without the chance for parole. Jurors are allowed to consider lesser charges of manslaughter and negligent homicide in the case.