COEUR d’ALENE — An attention seeker who was closer to staff members than his peers and who would rather be incarcerated than be released and return home.

That is how a young J.D. Renfro was described by juvenile justice officials Wednesday at the 29-year-old’s murder trial in Coeur d’Alene.

Renfro, who faces the death penalty after being convicted two weeks ago of first-degree murder by a jury for the 2015 shooting death of Coeur d’Alene Police Department Sgt, Greg Moore, was a good kid, quiet, not prone to violence, said Thomas Blackwell, a Grangeville middle school teacher, who until 2012 was a rehabilitation technician at the Juvenile Corrections Center in Lewiston where 12 years ago Renfro was housed.

The teenage Renfro was slightly built, small and skinny, someone who lacked confidence and sought attention from others, officials said. He didn’t seem to have much of a home life, and spent an unusually long 17 months at the facility where others usually graduated and were released in half the time.

“He gravitated to the staff more than to the kids,” Blackwell told jurors Wednesday.

Renfro, who was 16 or 17 at the time, was attentive and an active listener who interacted and asked questions in class.

“You would ask him to do something, and he would do it,” Blackwell recalled.

Still, Renfro dragged through the program and was at the facility much longer than any of the other kids, hanging so long in the third of the four phases required to graduate that officials couldn’t remember if he passed, or if he was just given a bye.

“It didn’t seem like he was motivated to get out,” Blackwell said.

Blackwell couldn’t recall Renfro ever having family visitors in his 1½ years at the Lewiston facility.

Case manager Jay Storm remembers J.D. as being awkward and small, someone who appeared to crave attention.

“He was continually seeking acceptance and attention within his group ... and from the staff as well,” Storm said.

Ken Streeter remembers Renfro as a funny kid whose aim seemed to be to get others to laugh.

“He was looking for peer acceptance,” Streeter said.

It was very unusual to retain an in-custody juvenile in a program as long as J.D.

“He lacked a desire to change,” Streeter said.

Besides what appeared a lack of motivation to learn, defense attorney Keith Roark asked if there may have been another motivation that kept J.D. at the facility so long.

“Also, he lacked a desire to go home,” Roark said.

Streeter agreed.

“Yes,” he said. “That could be.”

None of the witnesses considered Renfro aggressive or prone to violence.

“I’ve been at this job for quite some time, and he wasn’t one of the ones to stick out, or maybe rise to that level of crime,” Storm said.

Among the felons at the Boise penitentiary, the infamous “gladiator school,” as the privately operated prison was called, Renfro also stood out as being naive and awkward, someone who wasn’t aware of prison protocol and who needed help.

The first time convicted killer Steven P. Droogs met Renfro in prison the young man helped Droogs pick up his belongings that had spilled on the floor.

“He picked up my stuff and helped me move it into my cell,” an altruistic and unusual move in the prison environment, Droogs said.

“He was the odd duck,” Droogs, an Aryan, said. “I realized he was going to get himself into a glitch. He needed to have someone looking out for him.”

Droogs described prisoners as being fish or sharks. Renfro, who always helped others, even behind bars, fell between the distinctions.

“He would give someone his last stamp, so they could write home,” Droogs said.

Soap, coffee, if he had it, he would share it. Droogs didn’t remember family members stopping by, or putting money into Renfro’s commissary account. He didn’t remember Renfro getting letters from home. When he was offered a free phone call (he didn’t have the money otherwise to pay for one) he was elated, Droogs said.

“I don’t consider J.D. dangerous,” Droogs, who has spent 20 years behind bars, told the jury. “I seen J.D. go out of his way helping people when it breaks his back … He’s got heart.”

Chris Bronson who is serving four years for grand theft and drug convictions, and who knew Renfro from prison and more than a decade ago from juvenile detention, testified that J.D. was not violent, didn’t victimize or bully others, and that he wasn’t a threat to other inmates.

On cross-examination, the three inmates who testified Wednesday, heavily tattooed wearing orange inmate jumpers, agreed that a prison pact mandated they not help law enforcement or prosecutors and that snitching on others was a major break of the prison code.

“Snitches get stitches,” deputy prosecutor David Robins said after pointing out the three convicts had also faced charges of obstructing justice and lying to authorities.

The last phase of the trial, in which the jury hears mitigating evidence put on by the defense team in an effort to prevent jurors from sentencing their client to death, resumes today at 9 a.m. in First District Court.