Connecticut: Prosecution calls witnesses in home invasion case
NEW HAVEN, Conn. (AP) — A jury will hear from prosecution witnesses before deciding whether a Connecticut man should receive a death sentence for killing a woman and her two daughters during a home invasion.
Attorneys for Steven Hayes rested Monday.
Prosecutors planned to call about three witnesses Tuesday in New Haven Superior Court before the jury decides whether Hayes should get a death sentence or life in prison. Closing arguments and jury instructions are planned later in the week before the jury begins deliberations.
Hayes’ attorney, Tom Ullmann, said he planned to raise a legal challenge Tuesday because a juror dismissed Friday for a derogatory comment about the defense was replaced with an alternate. State law requires the same jury for the guilt and penalty phases of the trial. Superior Court Judge Jon Blue said Monday the issue was an intereresting legal argument over whether the phrase “the same jury” means the same 12 jurors or whether it can include alternates, as the Ohio Supreme Court ruled.
Hayes was convicted of killing a Cheshire woman and her two daughters in 2007.
Defense lawyers have tried to show that Hayes was a follower and his co-defendant, Joshua Komisarjevsky, was the mastermind of the crime that led to the deaths of Jennifer Hawke-Petit and her daughters.
Prosecutors say both men are equally responsible. Komisarjevsky faces trial next year.
Texas: Resentencing in Houston, husband stabbed 193 times
HOUSTON (AP) — A jury in Houston is considering the penalty for a woman being resentenced over the 2003 killing of her husband who was stabbed 193 times.
Deliberations were scheduled to resume Tuesday in the punishment phase for 34-year-old Susan Wright. The case involves the slaying of her 34-year-old husband, Jeffrey.
Wright initially was convicted of murder and sentenced to 25 years in prison, but the Texas Court of Appeals last year threw out the punishment. The appeals court agreed with Wright that her trial lawyers were deficient because they failed to present testimony from witnesses to bolster her claims of domestic abuse.
Prosecutors say Wright was lying and wanted her husband’s insurance benefits.
Deliberations began Monday.
New York: New trial date set in professor’s stabbing death
BINGHAMTON, N.Y. (AP) — Prosecutors say a new trial date has been set for the former graduate student charged with stabbing a Binghamton University professor to death last year.
Broome County District Attorney Gerald Mollen says Abdulsalam al-Zahrani (ab-DUHL’-sah-lam al-zah-RAH’-nee) is scheduled to go on trial Feb. 22 in county court in Binghamton. His trial was originally scheduled to start Jan. 18.
The 46-year-old Al-Zahrani was indicted last January on one count of second-degree murder in the Dec. 4 stabbing death of 77-year-old Richard Antoun, an emeritus professor of anthropology at Binghamton University.
Police say Al-Zahrani attacked Antoun inside a building on the college campus in suburban Vestal. Antoun later died from the wounds.
Al-Zaharani has pleaded not guilty.
Massachusetts: Abington man convicted of killing wife
BROCKTON, Mass. (AP) — An Abington man who shot his wife 18 times in a jealous rage because he thought she was having an affair has been convicted of first-degree murder.
John Tassinari was sentenced to a mandatory life term on Monday after a Brockton Superior Court jury took just three hours to convict him after a 10-day trial.
Prosecutors say the 32-year-old Tassinari used two handguns to kill 29-year-old Barbara Tassinari in the driveway of their home in April 2008.
Police arrived on the scene to find the victim’s brother holding the suspect.
District Attorney Timothy Cruz called the killing “an execution.”
The defense called the slaying a crime of passion, saying he flew into a rage when his wife told him she was having an affair, and argued for a manslaughter conviction.
Oklahoma: Man who killed trooper resentenced to death
LAWTON, Okla. (AP) — A Comanche County judge resentenced a former firefighter to death Monday for the 2003 fatal shooting of an Oklahoma Highway Patrol trooper.
District Judge Mark Smith announced the verdict after considering evidence presented in the non-jury trial of Ricky Ray Malone. The judge set a Jan. 14 execution date for Malone, but District Attorney Fred Smith said that will likely change when additional appeals are filed.
Malone was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to die for the Dec. 26, 2003, killing of Trooper Nik Green. Malone shot Green with the trooper’s gun after Green found him in a car on a Cotton County road that had a mobile methamphetamine lab inside.
The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals overturned Malone’s sentence in 2007 and ordered a new sentencing trial, ruling that prosecutors’ closing statements in the original trial were improper and unfairly prejudicial.
Judge Smith heard testimony over a two-week period from witnesses, including Green’s widow, Linda, and the sister and former wife of Malone, who said his behavior changed after he began using meth.
“The judge found two aggravating circumstances, those being that the victim was a police officer killed in the line of duty and that the murder was to avoid arrest and prosecution for the underlying crime of manufacturing methamphetamine,” District Attorney Fred Smith said.
Malone’s attorneys with the Oklahoma Indigent Defense System didn’t immediately return phone calls seeking comment.
The prosecutor said that if he didn’t believe the death penalty was appropriate, he wouldn’t have sought it.
“We asked for the death penalty and we received it,” Smith said. “We’re glad that this has come to this conclusion.”
As a result of Green’s death, the Oklahoma Legislature passed a law requiring over-the-counter cold remedies containing pseudoephedrine — a main ingredient in meth — be placed behind pharmacy counters. Purchases are limited, and those buying the medication are required to sign for them.
The number of meth labs seizures in Oklahoma declined dramatically after the legislation was passed, and similar laws have been adopted in other states.
