Kyle Flack, accused in a 2013 quadruple homicide in Franklin County, listens to defense attorney Tim Frieden during a hearing on Friday, Aug. 29, 2014.

A defense attorney, crying, and his voice cracking, pleaded with a Franklin County jury Wednesday to give convicted quadruple killer Kyle Trevor Flack mercy.

“I ask you to vote for life,” Timothy Frieden said. “Don’t make a choice you are going to regret … Choose life.”

The prosecutor, however, asked the jury to find “justice” for the victims of the crimes that he called “extremely wicked, shockingly evil and vile.”

“A 21-year-old mother shot in the back of the head followed by an 18-month-old child shot in the back,” Victor J. Braden, deputy attorney general, said. “What is the appropriate justice?”

The jury began deliberations Wednesday afternoon on whether to recommend Flack be put to death for the murders.

Last week, the jury convicted Flack, 30, of the capital murder of Kaylie Bailey, 21, and her daughter, 18-month-old Lana-Leigh Bailey.

The jury also convicted Flack of premeditated first-degree murder in the death of Steven White, 31, and second-degree murder in the death of Andrew Stout, 30.

If the jury recommends death in the case of the mother and toddler, Franklin County District Judge Eric W. Godderz can either impose the death penalty or sentence Flack to life in prison without parole. If the jury can’t decide after a reasonable period of deliberation, according to Kansas statutes, the judge will dismiss the jury and impose a sentence of life with parole.

The state of Kansas has not executed anyone since 1965, although 10 people are on death row, some of whom have been there for decades.

The murders in the Flack case took place between April 20 and May 1, 2013, at a farmhouse in rural Franklin County, eight miles west of Ottawa. All the victims were shot with a 12-gauge shotgun.

The closing arguments Wednesday evoked emotion not only from the defense and prosecution, but also from family members in the courtroom –those of the victim and those of Flack. Sobs could be heard throughout the room.

The jurors must weigh three aggravating factors against at least 25 mitigating factors. If the jury decides even one aggravating factor outweighs the mitigating factors, the jury can recommend the death penalty, but the decision must be unanimous, Braden, the prosecutor, told the jury.

The aggravating factors are:

• Did Flack previously commit a crime that involved great bodily harm? Flack was previously convicted of attempted murder in 2005. He shot a man multiple times in Franklin County, pleaded no contest and served less than four years in prison.

• Did he kill more than one person?

• Was the crime he committed “heinous, atrocious and cruel”?

As to mitigating factors, the judge read off a list, including that Flack had a traumatic childhood, was raised in extreme poverty and suffered from serious mental illnesses.

Flack’s life was extraordinarily difficult for a number of reasons, Frieden said, and those circumstances created the more than two dozen mitigating factors.

Mental health experts had described Flack during the trial as having suffered mentally because he was a “product of rape,” Frieden said.

“I don’t know what that does to a person,” he said.

Frieden read from a court filing that described a situation when Flack was about 8 years old. His stepfather reportedly told him and other siblings in the foulest of language that he was going to have sex with their mother. He then reportedly beat Flack’s mother and took her in the bedroom and raped her while the children sat in the living room.

His mother took Flack and her other children to a shelter numerous times to try to escape the abuse but then would return to her husband, Frieden said.

Flack’s mother, who was sexually abused as a child too, attorneys said, was also abusive to Flack.

“Kyle didn’t choose any of that,” Frieden said. “Not everybody is able to pick yourself up by your bootstraps and do your thing.”

Eventually Flack began a series of visits to mental institutions, where he was diagnosed with depression, borderline bipolar and schizophrenia, Frieden said.

Flack’s highest achievements happened not in the family home growing up but while he was in prison; those included earning a GED diploma.

Meanwhile the prosecution focused on Flack’s victims, particularly the mother and young child.

Braden said Bailey was bound and gagged in a bedroom of the farmhouse.

“She cannot scream for help,” Braden said, describing her last moments alive, adding that she couldn’t even see because her glasses were in the living room behind the TV, broken.

Braden told the jury how Bailey died — as described by Flack himself to police. She was in terror because she could not escape, and her young daughter was walking toward her.

After Flack shot Bailey in the back of the head, he turned the gun on the toddler.

“When it came to shooting an 18-month-old child, he couldn’t look her in the face. He shot her in the back. Lana landed on top of her mother,” he said.

The toddler’s body was later found in a suitcase that Flack had thrown into an Osage County creek.

The jury resumes deliberations on Thursday.