Estimated read time: 4-5 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
HERRIMAN — A jury found a Herriman man not guilty of manslaughter Thursday in the death of his sister's boyfriend after he had punched the man in the head during a fight.
The jury deliberated about six hours Thursday following a four-day trial.
Prosecutors closed the trial Thursday arguing that Cole Garrett Pedersen, 25, was out of control and looking for a fight on Aug. 29, 2015, when he showed up at Blake Burningham's Herriman house to confront him about whether he hit his sister.
If he hadn't, prosecutor Aaron Flater said, Burningham would still be alive.
"Cole took things too far," Flater said. "He knew it wasn't a good idea to go to the Burningham house, but he went anyway. He took the fight to them."
But Pedersen's attorney, Carl Anderson, said his client simply sought Burningham to find out what had happened and to evaluate whether it would be safe to allow his sister to return with him.
Instead, Anderson said, Burningham advanced aggressively toward Pedersen despite his attempts to back away, stripping off his shirt and challenging, "You wanna dance?"
"(Pedersen) had no intention of fighting Blake, he simply wanted to talk," Carl Anderson said in his final remarks to the jury. He went on to say Burningham's death "came down to an unforeseeable accident."
Jurors apparently agreed.
Pedersen was charged in September 2015 with manslaughter, a second-degree felony. The four-man, four-woman jury was also given the opportunity to convict Pedersen of two lesser alternatives: homicide by assault, a third-degree felony, or negligent homicide, a class A misdemeanor. But they ultimately acquitted him.
Pedersen's sister, CJ Pedersen, testified this week that her brother came to pick her up after she called him crying, saying her boyfriend had hit her when she tried to get between him and his brother in an argument. The group had been drinking that night, she said, and Burningham had been drinking "excessively."
After picking her up at a nearby elementary school, Pedersen and his sister went back to the Burningham house, 5973 W. Moon Shadow Dr. Flater noted that CJ Pedersen asked her brother not to go back, but to take her home instead.
When they reached the house, CJ Pedersen waited in the car as her brother confronted Burningham.
"Cole got out, very calmly, and walked over to them (Burningham and his brother)," said Pedersen, who stayed in the car with the doors locked, as her brother had told her to.
Flater, however, said Thursday that Cole Pedersen was hostile when he got out of his car, "speed walking" and cursing and as he demanded to know why Burningham had hit his sister.
When the verbal argument became physical, Pedersen hit Burningham in the face, breaking his nose, and came down on top of him as he fell backward onto the pavement, striking the back of his head. On top of the man, Pedersen landed at least one more blow.
While Flater claimed that Pedersen hit Burningham several times that night, including the final blow when he "took a free shot at an unresponsive and defenseless man," Anderson argued that additional abrasions to Burningham's head and face came from scraping against the curb and pavement as he fell and when CPR was administered.
Burningham went into cardiac arrest and never regained consciousness. He died of head trauma a few hours later at a local hospital.
Anderson told the jury that Pedersen's story has been consistent through interviews with police and his testimony on the witness stand. He has taken responsibility for hitting Burningham and regrets seeking him out, the attorney said, but when Pedersen threw that first punch, it was only in hopes of keeping Burningham from hitting him.
Anderson claimed his client acted out of self-defense and did not intend to kill the man.
"He had no way of knowing what would happen," Anderson said.
Flater agreed that Pedersen didn't intend for Burningham to die, but said his actions were nonetheless criminal.
"His actions show us he was angry, but he refused to admit he was angry during his time on the stand," Flater said. "He has blamed everything that happened on everybody else."
Contributing: Ben Lockhart
