Grant Macklem was an 18-year-old special education student who lived at home with his parents in Sunset Cliffs when he strangled a 17-year-old girl last year inside his bedroom. To that, the prosecutor and defense lawyer agreed yesterday. But was it murder or something else? “This is the man that killed Sarah Beagles,” attorney Marc Carlos told a jury, placing his hand upon the shoulder of his client during opening statements of Macklem’s murder trial in San Diego Superior Court. “But it’s not necessarily the mind that killed Sarah Beagles. That’s why we’re here.” Macklem is charged with murdering, raping and sodomizing Beagles on Sept. 19, 2003. If convicted, he will face a mandatory sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole. Deputy District Attorney Nicole Cooper told jurors the evidence will show that Macklem raped and killed Beagles over a 30minute period. When he was done, she said, he covered her body with a blanket and called his mother, who was out of town. Carlos told the jury Macklem has had mental problems virtually all of his life.
