Man convicted of plotting with wife to murder her lover after affair in South Bay

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — A jury on Tuesday convicted Craig Anderson of attempted first-degree murder and conspiracy charges for plotting with his wife to shoot the lover she'd been living with while Anderson was in jail.

Another jury is still deliberating whether to convict Cynthia Green-Anderson of the same charges.

During the couple's joint trial, which began earlier this month, Jerry Lee Logan told jurors that he had been having an ongoing affair with Cynthia Green-Anderson, who he said lured him to her house in South Bay on Aug. 2, 2008.

When Logan arrived, Assistant State Attorneys Chrichet Mixon and Adrienne Ellis told jurors, the couple took turns shooting him.

Anderson's attorney Shanna Manuel tried unsuccessfully to convince jurors that Anderson and his wife were trying to defend themselves from Logan, who she described as an obsessive man with a reputation for violence for whom Green-Anderson had sought a restraining order.

Specifically, she pointed to nearly 200 back-to-back phone calls Logan had made to Green-Anderson the night before he was shot as evidence that Logan, of Port Charlotte, was out of control.

"Who would do that? Nobody does that," Manuel said of the phone calls. "He is obsessive. Obsessive."

But prosecutors played recorded jail conversations between Anderson and Green-Anderson, saying he made good on his threats to "go off" on Logan once he got out of jail after he found out that Logan and his wife had rekindled their three-year on-and-off-affair while he was away.

Manuel said evidence at the scene made it appear more likely that the couple responded with gunfire because they felt threatened when Logan came to the house uninvited, but Ellis called the evidence the hallmarks of a plot hatched by unsophisticated people.

"Look who we're talking about here. We're talking about Craig Anderson and Cynthia Green Anderson. The word elaborate and conspiracy shouldn't even be in the same sentence with these people," Ellis said.

Attorneys in the case presented evidence to two separate six-member panels during the same trial, but presented different opening and closing arguments for Anderson and Green-Anderson.

Green-Anderson's jury began deliberations Monday afternoon. Anderson's jury heard closing arguments Tuesday morning and returned their verdict after less than three hours of deliberations.

Anderson faces a sentence of at least 25 years and up to life in prison.