Closing statements in Nelson's trial were completed on November 5, 1927. After forty minutes of deliberation, the jury sentenced him to death. Relatives of victims McConnell and Cowan visited Nelson in prison after his conviction, and he continued to proclaim his innocence. In late December 1927, Stitt submitted a thirty-page document to Minister of Justice Ernest Lapointe, petitioning for clemency on the grounds that Nelson was insane, and that his personal history had been unfairly presented to the jury via the press.