Jury Ponders Life or Death for Troiani

The Laura Troiani jury began deliberating Wednesday on whether the 26-year-old mother of two should be sentenced to the gas chamber.

“The only issue will be whether she dies by your timetable or God’s,” defense attorney Geraldine Russell said of her client, who was convicted by the same jury Aug. 26 of the first-degree murder of her husband three years ago.

The jury found special circumstances in the murder of Carlo Troiani, 37, in that he was killed in an ambush and for financial gain, thereby dooming her either to life in prison without the possibility of parole, or execution in the gas chamber. That is the decision now being weighed by the jury.

The jurors were unable to reach a quick decision Wednesday, spending nearly four hours deliberating the question before being excused for the day. They will return at 8:30 a.m. today.

Russell, saying there were “plenty of reasons” not to sentence her client to death, admonished the jury on Wednesday to use “care and caution” in deciding her fate.

“The death penalty should be reserved for those who show no social redeeming value,” Russell said. “If you find any redeeming value in her life, you must vote (for) life in prison without the possibility of parole. There is nothing more important than life.

“Your vote is a final vote. You must be absolutely comfortable you did the right thing (in reaching a verdict) 20 minutes from now, 20 days from now, 20 years from now. Laura Troiani will spend the rest of her life in prison. It is not necessary to kill Laura Troiani. It won’t bring her husband back.”

Final Remarks

Russell, the last attorney to address the jury before it began deliberations, concluded her 60-minute argument by asking the jury: “Are you going to order the execution of Laura Troiani in the gas chamber or are you going to let God decide when to let her die in her cell?”

Prosecutor Phil Walden spent about 90 minutes arguing that Troiani deserved no mercy for premeditated murder of her husband of five years.

Alluding to Carlo Troiani’s 17-year career in the Marine Corps, Walden said:

“When a man or woman signs up for the Marine Corps, they know they are potentially putting their life on the line . . . to die on some beachhead in a foreign land . . . (to have) died in honor.

“But the defendant decided it was his fate to die on a lonely, dark Oceanside road . . . in ambush, shot in the head. There was no glory, no honor. He was killed in contempt. She was judge, jury, executioner.

“What was the crime he committed to deserve a .38 slug to be pumped into the back of his head? His crime was love. He loved his family. He loved Laura Troiani.

“He was executed. This is an outrageous case and we suggest it deserves the death penalty. This case is as cold as you people can imagine.”

Walden recalled testimony from witnesses who said Laura Troiani wanted to kill her husband rather than divorce him so she could collect on his life insurance, and he noted the irony that Superior Court Judge Gilbert Nares, who has presided over the trial, hears divorce cases on Friday.

“He does a lot of them, but that was too easy for Laura Troiani,” Walden said. “By her own words, he (Carlo Troiani) was worth more to her dead than alive. She might as well have engraved those bullets, ‘To Carlo, with love, Laura.’ ”

Previous Slaying Attempts

Walden reminded the jury of several previous attempts on Carlo Troiani’s life by the co-defendants--whose individual trials have not yet begun--and said that throughout the scheme, Laura Troiani remained “cool and calm.”

He attacked one of the defense claims that Laura Troiani was a battered wife. He noted that at no time after her arrest did she suggest to police or defense psychologists that she was abused by her husband, and that such a notion only emerged in the final weeks of her trial.

Walden acknowledged that Troiani had no previous arrest record, but suggested that was not a strong mitigating circumstance in showing her mercy. “Clearly the law in California doesn’t give you one free murder,” he said sardonically.

Walden also attacked the defense position that Laura Troiani was in a no-win life because of her upbringing. Her father is in prison for attempted murder; her brother is in prison for sexual molestation of a young boy; her sister is the mother of two illegitimate children, and her mother was characterized during the trial as a hypochondriac who spends her days watching television soap operas and reading romance novels.

‘Absolutely Incredible’

Still, Walden said, the notion of her being on a “one-way street” is “absolutely incredible” because she was exposed to church activities and lived for several years with a stepfather who cared for the family’s well-being.

Finally, Walden admonished the jury not to be lenient on her because she is a woman. “We ask you to sentence her to death,” Walden concluded.

Russell, who followed Walden, mentioned to the jury several high-profile murders where the convicted defendants were not sentenced to death, and argued that Troiani’s crime was not so egregious as to deserve the death penalty.

She noted that another co-defendant, and not her client, was the one who actually loaded the gun and pulled the trigger.

“If anything,” Russell said, “she behaved foolishly and stupidly.”

While the Troiani jury deliberates, Nares said he would begin hearing pretrial motions today for Mark Schulz, the alleged triggerman. Schulz has pleaded innocent by reason of insanity to the crime, and his is the next case to go forward.

The San Diego County district attorney’s office is seeking death penalty convictions of all six defendants, saying they all shared in the plot to kill Carlo Troiani.

The prosecution contends that Troiani hired each of them with the promise of $500 payoffs to help her kill Carlo Troiani so she could collect on his life insurance and continue a romance with one of the defendants.

Each of the six was arrested the day after the killing. Laura Troiani confessed to Oceanside police detectives and the Marine co-defendants were overheard boasting about the slaying.