Orange County jurors listening to a murder for hire plot will decide whether 58 year old Sandra Jessee conspired with her son to kill her husband, who was ailing with cancer.
She allegedly gave the hitman $5,000.00 in a Placentia parking lot a year earlier with a total payment of $50,000.00. The hitman has since plead guilty to voluntary manslaughter and has cooperated with prosecutors.
It will be interesting to note whether and how the alleged hitman testified at trial. If his credibility was called into question, jurors would have to decide what weight to give his version of events and might even toss out whatever version he offered. If they did that, it would be devastating to the prosecution. If they believed him, the defense would have a hard time overcoming that version of events.
A skilled defense attorney doesn’t wait for the facts to come to him. He develops them out of the discovery he’s given, the investigation he does, and the arguments he crafts from all his preparation.
An experienced Orange County criminal lawyer knows that most trials don’t come out the way the prosecution intends them. Witnesses fold up like a lawn chair on the stand, or they take a powder and never show up at all. We’ll see what the jury says when they return a verdict.
If you want to know more about homicide, manslaughter or vehicular manslaughter defense issues, call Irvine, California criminal attorney William Weinberg @ 949.474.8008.