New Trial Ordered for Researcher in Killing of Wife

A Simi Valley man’s second-degree murder conviction for fatally shooting his wife, who allegedly beat him repeatedly during a stormy 11-year marriage, has been overturned by the state Court of Appeal.

A three-judge panel in Ventura late Friday awarded a new trial to Maurice Black, 38, ruling that Superior Court Judge Charles R. McGrath incorrectly instructed the jury not to consider a verdict of involuntary manslaughter.

Black, a former laser weapons researcher at Rockwell International, admitted walking into the bedroom of his Deanna Street home on Feb. 1, 1984, and shooting his wife, Karen, eight times as she lay in bed.

Outweighed by 50 Pounds

Karen Black outweighed her slightly built husband by about 50 pounds and assaulted him frequently, sometimes using a garden hoe or a lamp, defense attorney Willard P. Wiksell argued during the trial, saying that Black lived in fear that his wife would attack him as he slept.

Wiksell contended that Black fired the .22-caliber pistol reflexively when his wife started to assault him after she refused his demand that she leave the house.

The appellate court said the jury, which convicted Black in June, 1984, should have been given the option of finding Black guilty of involuntary manslaughter.

Wiksell said Monday that the defense would have sought such a verdict if the judge had allowed it. “If you look at the entire background of it, he snapped,” Wiksell said. “It was an unintentional killing.”

Prosecutors in the case could not be reached for comment Monday.

Black was sentenced to 17 years to life in prison and is being held in the California Correctional Institution at Tehachapi.

A new trial has not yet been scheduled.