Defendant Not Called to Stand in Slaying Trial : Moorpark: Decision comes after the judge rules that James Linkenauger could be cross-examined if he testified.

The attorney for a Moorpark man accused of choking his wife to death abruptly rested his case Tuesday without calling the defendant to testify.

The surprise decision by attorney Louis B. Samonsky Jr. came after the judge ruled against his argument that James Linkenauger, 39, should be allowed to tell his side of the story without exposing himself to damaging evidence on cross-examination.

When jurors get the case after closing arguments on Monday, they will have heard dozens of prosecution witnesses connecting Linkenauger to the slaying, and only one defense witness: a Camarillo man who admitted on cross-examination that he may have been mistaken.

Linkenauger, an unemployed mechanic originally from West Virginia, is accused of beating and strangling his 39-year-old wife, JoAnn Linkenauger, in a drunken rage hours after she returned home on a rainy night last January.

Samonsky, who concluded his defense without even an opening statement to the jury, told reporters several times during the four-week trial that his client wanted to testify on his own behalf.

Superior Court Judge Charles W. Campbell Jr. ruled Tuesday, however, that if Linkenauger took the stand to say he did not kill his wife, the prosecutor could explore their relationship on cross-examination.

Specifically, the judge said, Deputy Dist. Atty. Matthew J. Hardy could ask about JoAnn Linkenauger’s requests for restraining orders in 1990 and 1992, in which she alleged that her husband had beaten her. The judge said Hardy could also ask about assertions by the victim’s friends that she was afraid to go home because she feared her husband would kill her.

“That type of hearsay statement is very prejudicial,” Samonsky said. “The prosecution is sitting on evidence we feel would be extremely damaging.”

After the judge’s ruling, Samonsky and Hardy agreed to present the jury with a stipulation that the defense could call witnesses who saw Linkenauger “totally blind drunk” the night of the killing--which might support a verdict of manslaughter.

From prosecution witnesses, the jury has already heard references to the restraining orders. But jurors have heard no evidence of JoAnn Linkenauger telling friends and others that she thought her husband would kill her.

Nor has the jury heard evidence to support the defense attorney’s claims outside court that JoAnn Linkenauger had a “secret life” that she kept hidden from her husband--and that someone from that secret life may have been her killer.

“Your Honor, the defense rests,” was all jurors heard from Samonsky on Tuesday, except for the stipulations.

Last week, the jury listened to almost four hours of taped interviews of Linkenauger by homicide investigators who questioned him the day JoAnn Linkenauger’s half-naked body was found in a muddy ditch near Somis.

In the interviews, Linkenauger said he had no idea how bloodstains came to be spattered on the walls of his home, or how his watch ended up inside his wife’s car, which was found stuck in the mud 10 feet from the body.

He told investigators he was so drunk when he came home from the Moorpark Moose Lodge on Jan. 17 that it was all he could do to take a shower before going to sleep.

Neighbors, however, testified they heard screams and saw a man dragging a woman by the hair toward the Linkenauger home.

The one defense witness who did testify gave the jury mixed signals.

Andrew Handover, a Camarillo dog groomer who knew the Linkenaugers casually through his neighbors, testified last week that he was sure he had seen JoAnn Linkenauger in a supermarket checkout line at 5 p.m. on Jan. 17--the day she was killed.

Samonsky said later that Handover’s account calls into question earlier testimony that JoAnn Linkenauger did not leave her friends’ home in Burbank on her way home from Las Vegas until 7 p.m. that night.

But on cross-examination, Hardy got Handover to admit that he could not be certain what day it was or whether the woman he saw was JoAnn Linkenauger.

Samonsky on Tuesday requested that the jury be sequestered to ensure they did not read or watch news accounts of the trial. But Campbell denied the motion.

“I don’t think what was talked about today the jury is totally unaware of,” the judge said, alluding to the taped interviews played for jurors.

Outside court, Samonsky declined to comment on his strategy.

“I shouldn’t be compounding the problem,” the defense attorney said. “If this information gets to the jury, they aren’t going to be able to separate the truth from fiction.”