Week in Review : MAJOR EVENTS, IMAGES AND PEOPLE IN ORANGE COUNTY NEWS : COURTS : Former Dean Is Found Guilty of Killing Ex-Wife

A Superior Court jury last Wednesday found Donald E. Dawson, former assistant dean of Saddleback College, guilty of first-degree murder in the 1984 shooting of his ex-wife.

Dawson killed 46-year-old Dona Mae Dawson as she ran from him in front of her El Toro home. According to testimony in his trail, Dawson was trying to persuade her to take him back and was upset to learn she was dating someone else.

While Dona Mae Dawson and a boyfriend slept, Donald Dawson entered his ex-wife’s house with an extra key she kept hidden, trial evidence showed. Donald Dawson waited in an upstairs bedroom with two guns, several boxes of ammunition, pieces of rope and handcuffs.

When his ex-wife came through the door, Dawson fired six shots at her with a .38-caliber handgun. All those shots missed, but he hit her with a single shot as she ran down the sidewalk in front of the house.

Then, witnesses said, he stood above her and fired four more shots into her. Dawson waited until police arrived and told them what had happened, but he did not testify at his trial.

The former dean had hoped for a verdict of voluntary manslaughter, defense attorney Ronald G. Brower said. Dawson resigned his academic post--assistant dean in Saddleback’s division of technology and applied science--shortly after his arrest, then pleaded not guilty to murder by reason of insanity.

“He believes the jurors should have recognized the shooting occurred when he was in something like a psychotic state, a rage, and that legally it was a heat-of-passion shooting,” Brower said.

The jury did, however, reject a prosecution claim that Dawson was “lying in wait”--a special circumstance that could have subjected him to a life sentence without parole.

The first-degree murder conviction carries a penalty of 27 years to life, including two years for using a firearm. Dawson will be eligible for parole in 13 1/2 years if he is sent to prison, or he could be committed to a state hospital.